


His M'lady

by 13letters



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Acorn Hall, Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Firsts, LME, Loss of Virginity, Politics, Post - A Dance With Dragons, Romance, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-03
Updated: 2016-03-27
Packaged: 2018-04-02 16:15:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 40
Words: 148,769
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4066432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She closes her eyes and there he is.</p><p>Six and ten, crossing his arms over his ridiculously broad chest and looking at her like she isn't some highborn lady, just a silly girl that surely can't know the directions North better than he can. But she does, and then he's standing outside the gates of Winterfell again, twenty and two and calling her name; cursing her later when they're beside that stupid lake and justice really does deliver. </p><p>When his breath is hot against her, and everything is so perfect for at least this once as he's inside her for the first time and lust bedfellows his greed with the sins he's committing in the name of hope and her, and yes, yes, right there, his weight atop her, his kiss pressing to her lips.</p><p>As it's just them, and he isn't telling her to walk away, isn't telling her to never leave him again. </p><p>Her eyes are closed, and she's seeing everything in the flesh all over again, and oh, gods.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. But When You Left, You Left the Blame

"I'd only like to talk to her, if you'd just let me in there --" The men were taking each of the blacksmith's arms, straining against the rough muscles that fought against the human restraints. It had been nearly six years since ice-blue eyes had settled on her visage, since he had looked back from the wagon he couldn't leave to her not looking back for him, and -- **  
**

"I knew her! Years ago, and she'd tell you if you'd let me talk to her! Let me see her!" His voice was tinging with desperation, a brokenness, and years and years of guilt and regret started to sag his shoulders. The guilt of abandoning her, whatever his reasons, and being unable to do anything about the Hound kidnapping her and taking her to the Towers where he.. believed her to be killed. Dead. He suddenly felt so tired, so exhausted from the trek that had taken a few month's ride to reach. **  
**

Or years. Since he'd left her, left the Brotherhood, left that inn, left Braavos in his search for her when talk of Lyanna Stark's ghost gave him the first traces of hope. It was the first time he'd felt that warm will take hold of him in what felt like ages. Whispers spread like a dragon's fire after the war ended, and the rumors of Arya Stark near Volantis became gossip of the lost princess of the North returned. **  
**

A fourth man came to push him back through the gates of the kingdom rebuilt from its ashes, and he heard one of the guards sneer something about the Brotherhood scum as a gauntleted fist came into contact with his wrist. A new kind of fury sharpened his soot-smudged features into determination, and both his arms were free once more, though he wasn't sure what strategy he was vying for, striding through the gates without invitation or right. **  
**

"Arya!" he called, pushing away from the grip of the men that tried to keep him out. "Arry! M'lady?!" He was shouting now, desperate and hoping she'd hear him and know that he was sorry. Stupid and sorry and never meaning to have left her. At least not for that long. "Arya!" he tried once more, and his ribs were starting to ache. His boots were dragging back on the cobble as he and his trying captors struggled. Heavy metal doors were opening, he heard their screeching, and a swift pressure at his spine forced him to bend the knee. Head turned down, he was looking to the feet of the Lord of House Stark in Winterfell, Warden of the North. **  
**

He instinctively looked up, forgetting the manners he was taught that always had him averting his gaze out of respect and courtesy, and the eyes he saw were the same steel-grey he knew and remembered from memory and dreams. "Jon Snow?" He asked, but oh, it was more of a prayer, because Arya told him about her half-brother, how he was her favorite, how they both looked like their father with eyes encasing the coming winter. She'd told him that she and Jon were nearly inseparable with one never parted too far from the other. He didn't pray often, but he needed that to still be true. **  
**

Grey eyes narrowed down at him, and another hand at the back of his head turned his unworthy eyes down to fur boots. "M'lord," he added in mumbled apology. Something hit his left side, and the throbbing felt like it'd bruise. Had he been struck by a sword? Maybe just by his manners and patience. He suddenly thought of his golden-haired mother and all she'd taught him about respects to the highborn. _If your father was here_ , she'd tell him constantly. If your father --

"King," one of the men corrected bitterly. **  
**

But Lord Jon Stark shook his head and gestured up, signalling his guardsmen stagger the towering, stocky ser to his feet. "I'm not King here," he offered placidly, studying the young man's face. "The North's memory holds, but my father was Warden before me. There's only one queen now, ser." And if a bastard son could be legitimized a reigning Lord and Warden, then he could bear a real name, pass on that name to -- no, no, he wouldn't let himself plan his future and the rest of his life on one scant thought, not when it was one he'd entertained more often than propriety would befit a bastard. **  
**

Not when a particularly cold night on the way to the Wall had him offering a meager arm for his m'lady's warmth, not when that arm then had her small form nuzzled beneath his blanket and against his back for the night, not when the cold of her nose pressed to his neck, when he could, just once when she was caught between sleep and awake, call her m'lady and have her thank him without calling him stupid, though he was _stupid, stupid, stupid_ when he did silly things like dream. **  
**

Another cuff to his head had him spewing out more manners and pleasantries and courtesies as his stammered, bumbling words reminded him of the baseborn bastard blacksmith he was. **  
**

"Your grace, I-I knew y-your sister. When she was a brother. A lady! She -- the Wall, we were taken, and --" **  
**

"Silence," Jon commanded. The Lord had the stern face all Starks seemed to bear. Or so he thought with Arya, Lady Stoneheart, and now the legitimized bastard. Honor and destitute resolve and inflection in each syllable. But it wasn't unkind. It was cautious, protective, and gods be good, they'd already taken from him his own weapons, searched him for any other imposing threat he might propose the family or the returned princess. Returned, because she'd been lost, and he was stupid, stupid, stupid if he thought they'd let someone like him steal her away from the reunion he knew she'd cried herself to sleep hoping for. "She made no mention of you," he told him. **  
**

His heart lurched to the pit of his stomach, and he tried to read the stern expression ghosting down at him. "Begging your pardon, m'lord, but then how do you figure who I am?" Another man scoffed behind him, and he saw Jon's gaze leave his own to flicker behind him in warning. "Please," he begged. "Let me talk -- speak -- to her. Let me apologize, let me.." He quickly trailed off, unsure even of what he'd do. Apologize? Surely, because he had left her, but she left, too. And she left for longer. He could envision that argument now, the defiant set of her chin like she used to be so partial to. And maybe he'd even win that argument. Or maybe he'd just kiss her, like he'd dreamed of doing, when particularly lonely nights had one hand down the laces of his trousers, when he wouldn't let himself acknowledge the thoughts he was thinking of. Who he was thinking of. It wasn't proper, wasn't -- **  
**

"-- welcome here." Jon had finished. Another motioning gesture bid a man to push Gendry forward, and he tossed an unsure look backwards, then forwards, with a confused blink before following after Lord Stark.

"She's changed," he offers quietly as they entered the castle and turned down one of the many corridors. The warmth started to melt the snow dusting his ebon hair. "She did speak of you. Gendry Waters. Ser of Hollow Hill? You both were being taken North by Yoren." **  
**

It wasn't a question, and Gendry wondered just how much Arya had told him. He'd never considered the brothers of the Night's Watch Yoren never made it home to like he'd considered it his own fault the man had died, all because the goldcloaks were searching for him. Some nameless bastard from Flea Bottom. "To protect us both," he finally said. **  
**

Lord Stark turned quickly, forcing the blacksmith to halt his appropriately kept distance behind him. "He was a good man. A good friend." Something unreadable darkened his eyes, and a kitchen maid scurried past them and down the hall. He looked as if he might say something else, but he didn't. "I'm grateful she had you," he told him after a long moment of silence. He'd smiled, but he looked tired, and the same look of stoicness still settled across his features. "She's just at the end of the hall, beyond the wide doors." **  
**

He watched him leave, figuring him to be in some sort of hurry since he'd not even waited to be addressed in formality. Maybe it just didn't matter to him; it hadn't been long, he thought, since Jon Snow had been decreed a Stark officially. It must be strange. **  
**

Still strange, he forced himself to think in distraction, going from freezing on the wall to warm in a castle, with lands, titles. His callused fingers were around the handle before he let himself think too much on it, and it was so strange to be addressed as a lord, probably, when -- his hands were starting to shake -- all he'd been identified by was the bastard of Winterfell, Winterhell, he remembered, with Hot Pie asking Arry if she was sure that was the name of her home, and she was.. was inside, and his mind was reeling. **  
**

What if she didn't want to see him? He couldn't find his confidence. She hadn't forgotten him, he knew that now thanks to her brother, so at least she remembered and was at least well enough to be kept here. She was in good health. Panic suddenly seized hold of Gendry, and he lurched. Was this just a room? What if this was some sort of maester's workplace, what if she lay on her sickbed? What if she'd made it so far and tried so hard to return to rightful place here, only to fall ill and never recover? **  
**

Oh, _seven hells,_  he thought. She's never recovering. His mind conjured him images of her pale and lifeless on a cot somewhere, and no, no, she had to be well, she had to still be strong and fierce and "Arya!" he shouted in a fury as he pushed open the door with his blue eyes flashing. **  
**

Stitchwork had been set aside where he knew it hadn't even laced its first needle, and the heavy door closed behind him as he stood frozen. There -- by the window, a long braid of brown hair whipped as a head turned, and oh, seven hells. **  
**

"Arya," he whispered in the stillness to the grey eyes (and steel was suddenly too plain for such life flaring in her irises and cloudy skies too doomed for the beauty) leering back at him. Bright. And wide. And full of emotions he couldn't find the thought to place because she wasn't lying ill on a bed with some sickness claiming her life. She was just Arya, still, and when she slowly stood, he'd swear his swordhand she'd grown at least three notches taller.  **  
**

The girl he'd known was a young woman, no longer a little bit of a thing that punched his shoulders when her head couldn't even reach them. She was a woman grown now, probably.. oh, gods, seven and ten years? Eight and ten? He couldn't train his eyes off her face, staring and looking for hints of her he knew looking at him. Her face was thinner, he decided. But not like it'd been when she was starving in Harrenhal. Her chin wasn't as jutted, her cheeks weren't so baby-faced, and her lips looked fuller in their silence. **  
**

Like she still didn't see him, and again he feared she might not recognize him. His conscience tore at him, because why would she remember someone most ignored for his social standing, and he was ready to put one foot in the door behind them and bid his m'lady a farewell wish off forever since she was safe and taken care of and doing so well without him. That'd give him comfort and relief enough, and standing there -- her feet were bare, he noticed now -- with her fists clenching the pleated sides of her dark brown skirts and her eyes still wide and frozen, she nearly looked a child again, small and shocked and vulnerable. But well enough, and that was enough for him. **  
**

He was smiling before he could help himself, and he noticed now for real that her hair was braided, and it was grown, and the chestnut (acorn) brown was vivid against the white of her shirt, and he was still smiling in a small way, because she was well, and he could convince himself it had all been righted eventually, right? He was still smiling, even as he cursed the redness starting to burn his eyes. _I'm sorry_ , he wanted to stay, to beg and plead her forgiveness for all the -- he heard it: the smallest sound, not a gasp, not a sigh. Her bare feet were rushing towards him, and he heard it again, like a cry. **  
**

Her arms were extended out, her face a blotched red, and he could hear the songs they'd sing about them, the Knight and the the Lady, the Bastard and the Princess, the Blacksmith and the Sword, and "Arya," he'd whispered again, taking a sure-footed step forward to enfold her into his arms, into her reach, and her hands clasped around his throat. **  
**

"You left!" She shrieked in a voice that didn't sound like her own. She sounded like anger and betrayal, and she was shaking. "You left! You left me, were part of all of us, and you left!" **  
**

Her hands were harmless to his neck, but the surprise and the shock, the violence he hadn't expected with the repetition of her words guilting him once more for the different sort of bastard he was had fear flashing through him. The color drained from his face, and he thought her fingers were practiced where his throat's pulse was strongest. "I know!" He strangled out, gasping as her little weight pushed him back against the door. But his hands were larger, stronger, and his fingers clamped hers from his neck. "I know!" He repeated, and he was shouting, too, grunting as her whippet-quick movements wrestled her arms free so she could strike him, fist to jaw. "You left, too!" **  
**

"You left first!" She growled, lifting her knee to jab at his thigh. She pushed against his chest, shoving him harder against the door. **  
**

"But I told you why!" His wince was audible, and he was _stupid, stupid, stupid_ if he thought his strong, large hands holding her at arm's length would spare him the wrath of the girl who was a woman now, twice scorned. **  
**

"Why?!" She'd demanded, almost so childishly that she was a nine year old girl again, sobbing and pleading with the old and new gods for her father back. 'Why?' she'd asked then, and his heart felt the same absent tug at the corners as she shoved at his chest again. Or tried to, all flailing arms and writhing limbs while her face grew redder. **  
**

"Because!" He fired back with a fierceness that stilled her briefly. He slacked his grip so he was only holding her forearms gently. And there -- the spark of fire he recognized burning deep in the grey that looked up to him. **  
**

She was quiet, still in his arms for all of a breath before she was flailing again, fluctuating angry words with swipes of her fists at whatever she could reach. He could feel the turmoil steaming anger and seething hatred off her body, and he didn't fight the punches she didn't put her weight behind. "That isn't an answer!" She shouted, aiming another punch at his jaw. "I wanted you to come with me! You could have smithed for my brother! Here! You stupid," his right shoulder, "bull-headed," his left, tear-blurred side, "stupid b- ow!" She shot back, quickly darting away from his grasp while cradling the fist that punched him. **  
**

He blinked at her slowly as she fret, watching her bring her stinging bright pink knuckles closer to her face when realization hit him. His armor. "It's a chain jerkin!" He heard his voice too loud in defense and apology,and she brought her sore knuckles to her mouth as she glared at him and his offense, like he really had the gall to physically wound her after having her believe he was dead. **  
**

"Burn in hell," she mumbled without much bite. She sounded small and quiet again, and her eyes were welling with new tears. **  
**

His hands reached out to her, tense with his arms reflexively 'lest she deck him like she used to. Her eyes flickered to his warily, though she didn't move, and he felt his mouth quirk up with a smile that didn't hurt this time. "As m'lady commands." The bow of his head was the same she remembered as he nodded to her, ice-blue eyes softening in another apology as she let him take her hand. **  
**

She didn't bite back with her words; she just stood there staring at him, assessing him, because a life wasn't the only thing time changed. He was taller. Shoulders were broader. Fierce stubble dragged against his jawline, and his eyes -- the same piercing blue they always had been, when she'd first seen him, when he saw her laugh the first time at one of his silly jokes, when he'd followed her, when he left. "You're so stupid," she jeered, the syllables wretched in insult and hurt as the red in her eyes started to cloud her vision of his fingers softly rubbing the soreness of her knuckles. **  
**

And he was stupid. "I am," he had to agree, cursing each memory and hope as his shoulders curved inwards towards her tiny frame. He really thought she was going to hug him, and all he'd done was hurt her. **  
**

His jaw was stinging. He dared the bravest, slightest stop towards her, and he heard another hitch in her breath in wariness. In tears. A moment of silence passed between them as defiantly, her chin raised. "I thought you had been killed." **  
**

He knew the tone she spoke with, the one that she had when she didn't care about much for caring about everything. His grin was only more broad, more stupid, stupid, stupid. "I thought the same of you." He inhaled deeply, gently releasing her hand with a soft brush of his thumb over her knuckles in another apology. The words he'd feared to speak aloud no longer seemed to plague the weariness of his shoulders. He wouldn't tell her of the guilt he carried, of how he screamed out her name in the surrounding forests in case she was close enough to hear him, how he mourned for her when he learned she was taken by the Hound, when he thought she was killed by damned Frey. But what happened after that? **  
**

For just an instant, she grinned, and he saw Arry had really turned into a beautiful young woman. "I'm offended you would think so little of me," she quipped. **  
**

"Me, too." He had agreed simply, shrugging his broad shoulders in the self-same careless way, an act. "M'lady." Teasing her was just as easy as it always had been, and his eyes crinkled at the corners with his smile when the red in her cheeks came from anger instead of grief. **  
**

"I'm no lady," she hissed. Her arms were surging forward again, tiny, capable fists curling around the broad span of his neck where smooth skin flared out to stubble that squared his jaw. His skin was still hot. The blood of the forge, he used to jape, and she was suddenly aching to hug him, the one constant she'd known for so long. "You came back." **  
**

He was silent for far too long, and he briefly wondered if she was thinking him stupid. Her thumb was idly tracing over his throat, and her eyes -- commanding truth and trust in the honesty he'd almost never denied her. "As did you, Arya," he hushed out finally, briefing another inch nearer to her as his hands lifted to her sides in the makings of an embrace. **  
**

"Did.. did they give you trouble outside?" She asked him, merely needing something to say to the darkening blue staring into her where they stood. **  
**

"No." **  
**

"Did I hurt you?" Her thumb was still tracing his throat. **  
**

"Yes." **  
**

"You're a liar." **  
**

"I am." His lips lilted again to the smirk that always did wonders to improve his face, and the dimple to the cleft of his chin was too familiar and too sorely missed. He can't remember the last time he'd smiled so much, but he can't remember the last time a prayer had been answered before now. **  
**

She mumbled, "Stupid," as she cautiously shifted the last fraction nearer him, curling her arms around his neck and over his shoulders in a slow hug. Time and distance didn't matter anymore, they weren't strangers even if years didn't make them friends, not when he -- he what. She froze, her cheek at his jerkin lifting to bore into his blue hues once more. "How'd you know to come here?" **  
**

"All of Westeros has been speaking of you," he laughed, though it earned him a familiar pinch at the back of his neck. Relief flooded through him, still, that the never quiet gossip of Arya Stark of Winterfell had proved true. He'd have to thank the Seven all over again for their answers. "I came as quickly as I could, was sc-- was searching for you." For years. His throat was cleared with a quick cough, and easily, his broad arms weaved around her slim waist tenderly, holding her as close to him as propriety would allow. **  
**

She was still looking up at him, an unreadable expression fretting her grey irises and furrowing her brows. Like she was trying to decide if her stomach liked the nameless meat she was digesting in Harrenhal, like she was lost somewhere between wanting the acorn dress and the clean prettiness that came with it or not, like she was watching him trying to pen the letters of her name. Sloppily. Curved wrong. Etched with a shaking hand. Not like she'd told him that, no, the 'Gendry' he'd carved for the first time was nothing short of perfect. "You were.. what, Gendry?" She asked. **  
**

He wanted to curse the gods he'd been praying to moments before, because how could he refuse such eyes looking at him like that? Like his m'lady was. "Scared," he rumbled out without missing a beat, the words deeper and quiet and almost reverberating against the plate of his chestpiece against her. But he wasn't looking down at her, and he shouldn't still feel guilty for her lost life when she was in his arms. Her friend's arms, he reminded himself. **  
**

"Of what?" She asked, and he wondered why she didn't think him weak. **  
**

"For who," he quietly corrected. **  
**

And she seemed to get it, a second too slow. Her eyes softened in warmth as she smiled. **  
**

"Oh." She said simply, and her cheek found his sternum again. **  
**

"Oh," he repeated, and his smirk was audible again as his knees buckled just a bit -- lowering a little more of his form to her height. "I missed you," he spoke, so softly she might not have heard with the crown of her head quieting his words and warm breaths. **  
**

"Me, too," she said after a moment. **  
**

He heard her sniffling with the promise of tears. Bowing his head down to center with hers, he whispered, "Don't cry." **  
**

She was pretending that she wasn't, of course, never a slight of weakness even while her rounded nails were biting into the nape of his neck. "I'm not." **  
**

And he'd pretend she wasn't, if that is what his m'lady wanted. "We're alright, now," he hushed out in the same slow-spoken voice, quiet to the tiny sobs rendering and wracking her form against him. "You're alright, and I'm alright," he swore, curving his arms more protectively around her. **  
**

He felt more than saw the faint nod she'd mustered with another sniffling breath, her forehead just barely pressing against his. "I know," she whispered, and he knew that Stark resolve would have the words made true. Another small grin started to curve his lips, and he thought she was smiling, too. "Even the ones that aren't, right?" He knew that look, the slight curl of her mouth that hinted at elusivity when a question really meant the world to her. When his answer did. "My father," she quickly continued, "my brothers. The people we knew, though they aren't here anymore, they're --" **  
**

"Yes," he interrupted her, nodding sagely as he looked into her eyes. "Yes." He needed her to know that, needed her to never doubt that death was never an end for loved ones when they were the noble Lord Eddard Stark or the King in the North, Robb Stark, or the Bran she told Gendry she loved so much or even Lommy. Jory. Yoren. Catelyn Stark, too, because even he hated the Brotherhood just a little for what they did to Lady Stark. And if the dead were still with her in spirit and heart, then his loved ones were still with him, and he was a hypocrite for that not being enough when he thought his m'lady was passed. "They're alright," he swears. "In a better place, they say, in the.. light? Of the seven. With lots of those trees. The godswoods. With you." **  
**

His earnestness almost made her laugh; he was always so quick to offer comforting words and indulge her stupid thoughts, but her laugh was more a watery cry when he heard it, and she mumbled her thanks into his chest. He wouldn't ask why the dead were on her mind when she'd made her peace, even if she'd thought she'd seen a ghost in him moments ago. **  
**

"You're welcome, m'lady." **  
**

She'd sensed the tension in his arms like he might release her with the insistent little press of formalities and what should be more space between them, but she'd pinched his neck again, and oh, those memories, silently demanding he not step away. Or leave, not when he had just come back to her. "You'll stay for supper," she mumbled. He didn't miss the plaintive demand in her tone. **  
**

There was nothing for a few moments, and Shaggydog howled somewhere from outside as a gust of wind rattled at the window she'd been sitting at. Her arms relaxed against him, and he felt it, and he felt her breaths against his neck. And he could almost feel the stares at this dinner feast that tempted him to refuse. The guardsmen, the other patrons, her family. How they'd stare, question, judge. But then there'd be an Arya. His Arya. With a laugh and her quick wit and her grey eyes sparkling with happiness for him. He'd reprimand the thought later. "As m'lady commands." **  
**


	2. We Learned To Win and Then To Fail

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He mulled over the steamed venison piled onto his plate slowly, concentrating on the thoughts starting to muddle in his mind from the honeyed wine, and what had Arya teased him about moments and moments ago? He could hold his ale, and she didn’t know what she was talking about as she recollected a memory of one of the Brotherhood’s feasts where Gendry most certainly did not dance on a stool.

"You're stupid," she frowned. **  
**

He couldn't help but grin. "I was tellin' the truth. M'lady." He'd added the last bit just to annoy her like he usually did, his own jape just for her since she was so keen on calling him stupid all the time. He wasn't, and he didn't mind her teasing - he just liked to rile her up so much enough that she stomped her feet and scowled at him. Just a little girl. **  
**

And he maybe made up stories to tell her when she'd asked him to, though he didn't know many. This walk for firewood's story had been about one of the strawmen in a farmer's field coming to life during the night, but he didn't tell her the version he'd first heard. The scary one where the strawman ate children by night and coiled all the grasses and wheat and cornstalks up to frightening, trapping hedges to hold their victims, usually small children, captive.  **  
**

While Arry considered himself fearless, he knew the night's terrors sometimes scared Arya, but just on the nights the stars hid in the sky while the ground grew colder and the men 'guarding' them grew meaner. Too many lasses had been pushed into bushes and screamed through the night, and too many of their lads had been attacked or gullied into a fight they couldn't win. **  
**

"Don't be stupid around them," she stubbornly demanded of him one night, fearful that his body might join the broken and mangled bodies that didn't cry out anymore. **  
**

As usual, she was curled up at his back for warmth, and he'd gotten too used to her knees digging into his shoulderblades to mind anymore. He remembered rolling just a little, turning his head to face her as his shoulder wedged beneath her chin. Her eyes weren't open, but he knew she was still awake. He was just grateful she wasn't cold tonight. It had rained all the past week, and today was one of the first days in a long while they remembered what dry clothing felt like. **  
**

"I won't," he promised, and he saw her dark lashes flutter in sleep as she tiredly murmured something about berries. Maybe she wasn't still awake. She was two and ten now, and she did fancy any red berry they'd come across, and he stared at her lips for a long moment before facing back around. "I can't," he swore to himself. After all, who'd protect Arya if he wasn't around? **  
**

So he had kept his  head down, careful and cautious. This outing was meant to be a reprieve, but his m’lady wasn’t having it.  **  
**

"There's no such thing as living scarecrows." He practically heard her eyeroll, and she was anything but graceful as they went from tree to tree. **  
**

"And how would you know, girl?" **  
**

"Because I'm not stupid." She didn't even bristle. **  
**

He knew she hated it when he'd asked if she was alright constantly, even when she was starving or frozen or frustrated, but he remembered wondering what had her so upset that day. She was glowering at the tree looming over them, her pile of gathered firewood dumped at her feet. “Let me,” he tried instead, crossing over to where she stood. His burly arms easily combined their piles as he hoisted up the sticks, and with a jerk of his head to her glare, he strode off. “What’s eating at you?” **  
**

“Nothing,” she grunted, kicking at a stone. **  
**

He glanced back to look at her, feeling his jaw set with irritation. Today was another day that started to look up, and now her sour mood was rubbing off on him. “If you don’t want to talk about it none, you should keep quiet otherwise.” His tone was more harsh than it ought to have been. He heard her exhale angrily as she lagged behind him, and he remembered how she didn’t talk to him all of the next day after coming back to camp empty-handed. **  
**

He didn’t know what was bothering her then until days later, her monthly blood, but he wasn't about to ask if that's what upset her now. **  
**

He came to this feast, and he washed, and he even took an edge to his jaw so he was clean-shaven. Clothing had been left on the bed in the room someone had directed him to by the Lord’s (Arya’s) insistence, and the silken threads were by far the finest he’d ever worn, even if there was a common look to the simple clothing. **  
**

He didn’t look as finely dressed as she was, all dark blue and grey silks draping around her elegantly. And accenting what he knew other men were staring at when she entered. She had grown up, he realized again, and he had half a mind to tell her to pull that bodice’s neck up a fair distance higher. If he could manage the words without turning eleven different shades of scarlet, anyways, ‘cause he looked, too.  **  
**

She was still ignoring him, though most of his conversation had been with her moments ago. He didn’t feel so out of place when he was talking to her amidst all the other carrying voices conjoining in the rest of the great hall around them. Knights, lords? He couldn’t begin to guess who joined the Starks at the table below - like he couldn’t guess which silver spoon to use for each dish proper. **  
**

Rickon was seated opposite him, the autumn-haired young boy Arya used to speak of as just a baby when she saw him last, and he smiled often and spoke loudly and boisterously, much to his lady sister Sansa’s chagrin. She’d corrected him often enough as the picture of fine grace, but he noticed how she seemed to be fighting a smile, albeit a guarded one. Rickon only kept grinning at some jape or another, and Gendry would have to thank him later for how pointedly he reached for the proper silverware in subtle display.  **  
**

The boy’s sheepish smile told him he knew the lowborn didn’t know the first thing about dining with such finery, but perhaps the boy of ten and a couple years didn’t mind as much as the others did. He was laughing at some tale a man Gendry didn’t know told from beside them, and he decided he liked the youngest Stark. He had freckles under his eyes and over the bridge of his nose like Arya did, but she still wasn’t looking to him, facing away blatantly in her seat next to him and engrossed in what sounded like quite the enthusiastic conversation. **  
**

“..Ser Gendry?” His gaze snapped up when he heard his name, and the silence at their table told him all eyes were waiting on his answer or response to something. **  
**

Well, all eyes but two.  **  
**

Rickon nodded his head to the left towards Sansa, gesturing to which of his hosts addressed him. And Gendry's eyes instantly dropped to the table with a polite bow of his head, and he tried to think of the courtesy that pardoned a man for not listening to his host when he was too busy figuring out why he offended her sister. **  
**

Lady Sansa didn’t look impressed, but the same guarded smile shaded her again. “Do you have plans to stay near Winterfell?” His gaze drew back up at once, and she continued, “We never were able to hear your response; another dish was served and the topic was averted.” Since all he did was sit in his stoic silence like he did when he wasn’t directly addressed or questioned on a particular adventure he suffered with Arya. **  
**

And she’d tensed, he felt it, noticed the slight stiffness in her arm as she found herself with a mouthful of some green vegetable he wasn’t sure she liked.  **  
**

You could make swords for my brother in Riverrun, he remembered her telling him one day he slaved in the forge. A part of him was awaiting her to speak up with the same offer, but he wasn’t sure she still wanted him to - not after that argument nor her aggravation now. He came back, yes, but to see she was safe and home and happy, and.. stay? What would a bastard ‘smith even have here for him ‘sides plenty of work and ample warmth and food if he was lucky? The help didn’t talk too much to no highborn ladies, even if the lady ignored the social graces and the bastard boy was bound to forget them. **  
**

“I haven’t considered it in length,” he replies neutrally, slowly, trying to sound proper and all sorts of casual. He wouldn’t be the stubborn, bull-headed bastard boy she couldn’t escape; her offer years ago had been one of an eager child longing for home and familiarity, even if she was a princess then. Princesses and noble ladies especially didn’t marry their castle’s blacksmith or unbannered knight. **  
**

“Mikken’s been meaning to retire,” Lord Stark said from his head seat at the table’s end, a thoughtful expression on his face. Gendry waited for him to say more, but he didn’t, and a quick glance to Arya indicated she still wasn’t looking to him.  **  
**

He focused back on his many plates, considering again how out of place he was when Sansa’s high voice went on about House Tyrell. He heard Rickon snort his agreement of something, and then he heard Jon laugh about something or another, followed by a rowdy cheer of various men around the rest of the room. **  
**

He mulled over the steamed venison piled onto his plate slowly, concentrating on the thoughts starting to muddle in his mind from the honeyed wine, and what had Arya teased him about moments and moments ago? He could hold his ale, and she didn’t know what she was talking about as she recollected a memory of one of the Brotherhood’s feasts where Gendry most certainly did not dance on a stool.  **  
**

He could still hear her dramatic gasp when he’d forgotten himself and confessed to her family how she’d sampled enough ale to silence a giant, and between the Lord Stark’s guffaws and his sister’s astonished Arya! he thought staying in Winterfell could be all the better with this easy moments that had him forgetting thrice the status that barred him and her from what should be a friendship at the least. She had been his friend, before everything. And now he'd needed to not stare at her like that. At least not if he was staying. **  
**

He didn’t notice when Arya had dismissed herself from the table, but he did notice when he didn’t see her the rest of the night and the next. **  
**


	3. Letting Go Is Not the Same As Pushing Someone Else Away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why didn't he ever say what he meant? Couldn't he just tell her why he'd went there and left again? Why he came back?
> 
> Oh. 
> 
> Well, she knew that part, but her defenses were brazen once more. "I'm not sure why you left," she quipped, trying to force the annoyance from her voice.

She didn't know where he was. And she didn't care, not really; he could have gone off wherever he wanted. Whenever he wanted. Left, for all she cared. And she didn't. Just like the last time, the stupid bull.  **  
**

..He truly hadn't considered staying? It was his idea to join her towards Winterfell in the first place, why wouldn't he want to anymore? **  
**

Stupid bull. **  
**

"Arya, if you keep scowling like that you'll wrinkle."  **  
**

She gave Sansa a look, half-exasperation, half-anger. She scowled more sullenly and fiercely closed the useless book in her lap.  **  
**

"Are you still writing to Willas?" She asked after a moment, vying for a subject change she knew could distract her sister for hours. **  
**

And she succeeded. Sansa's cheeks instantly tinged pink, and Arya thought love looked good on her. "Yes, I'm still corresponding with Lord Tyrell," she stressed, all formalities. Her face was sweeter when she smiled genuinely like that with a softness touching her eyes. "Did you know he's adding a vineyard to his gardens?" **  
**

She shook her head mildly, offering a simple, "No." Glancing past her to the bay window behind them, she didn't have the energy to scowl anymore. She needed to know where he was. She hadn't seen him all yesterday with the aid of strategic planning and a stubborn grudge, but at least he couldn't have left the North by now. It'd take another few days, wouldn't it? **  
**

Sansa watched Arya's frown slowly shadow her features, and nonchalantly, she kept her voice low. "He isn't out there." **  
**

"Who?" **  
**

"Ser Gendry." She wet her quill with more ink. **  
**

Rolling her eyes, she shifted both legs to tuck beneath her in the padded chair. "He probably left already." **  
**

"Rickon said he wanted to take him riding and show him the grounds." **  
**

"He's a terrible horseman," she mumbled bitterly. But she didn't want to talk about that. Or Gendry at all.  **  
**

Stupid bull.  **  
**

It didn't matter where he was. "He's nothing like Lord Tyrell," she said instead. **  
**

"No one is," she thought she heard Sansa say quietly to herself. And before she could help it, she was seeing her sister elegantly dressed in white, with pearls outlining her veil and bodice and -- no, Willas liked gold and green brocade. Lord Tyrell told Loras told Lady Marjaery told Sansa told Arya, and there'd be roses everywhere, and the well-wishers would toss the petals at the happy couple. And Sansa would be a Tyrell living in Highgarden. "He didn't speak much at dinner when he wasn't talking to you," she observed, rousing Arya from her thoughts. **  
**

"Everyone's a stranger to him," she shrugged. He usually never shut up, though. Not unless he was thinking or sullen. **  
**

"Rickon seems taken with him already, and Jon smiled at him over the table." **  
**

"What are you writing in your letter?" And it was suddenly easier to scowl, and Willas could go ahead and marry Sansa and handle her nonchalant, sugared, meddling tone himself. **  
**

"I'm telling Willas how peculiar it is that you sit here with me instead of spar in the practice yard for once," she said brightly, cheerily reaching for another sheet of parchment.  **  
**

When Arya did nothing but sigh, her dark brows knitted in deep thought, she set her letter work down and smoothed the pleats of her skirts. "It's obvious when you're upset, you know." **  
**

"I'm not," she replied automatically, briefly glancing over to where her sister sat.  **  
**

"It's always been obvious. You can talk to me if you'd like to, Arya." Her voice was just as quiet, and when she looked, there was a gentile sort of tenderness setting her features.  **  
**

She reminded her so much of Mother then, Arya felt a tug pull ravenously at her heart. She wanted to hug her sister and kiss both her cheeks, weep her mind to Sansa because why do so many people leave, why couldn't they have met Robb and Mother at Riverrun all those years ago so she could have told him how Gendry would make the prettiest swords for him if he'd please just let him stay? **  
**

Something in her sister's earnestness chipped at her resolve, and she found herself wanting to confess her thoughts. She didn't care where he'd gone, no, he could ride all the long way to Dorne if it pleased him.  **  
**

"He.. he's likely going to leave." She admitted after a long moment, flickering her gaze towards blue-grey eyes impassively. Her throat was dry, and she almost felt foolish for distancing herself from him. At least when she wasn't angry.

Sansa was quiet for a breath, studying her in the silently observant composure she hadn't had years before. Her face didn't give all of her thoughts away like it used to, she realized, and maybe her fair-faced sister did have the worst of it years ago:  beaten by Joffrey and wed to the Imp and smuggled North by Littlefinger. She might have thought she appreciated her sister more, admired her even, until she squeaked in surprise when a large crash sounded against the twinned parlor doors. **  
**

"Oh, I've smudged my letter!" she exclaimed, and Arya snorted. **  
**

But the fussing over dabbled ink and chortling was quieted again when a large figure pushed through the room's entryway. Gendry. And he was looking only at her with something fierce in his eyes, and she wasn't laughing anymore.  **  
**

Good, she thought. He was angry.  _I am, too._ **  
**

"Why are you still here?" She sniped, a bored, harsh edge to her gentle voice. She noticed vaguely how a head of red hair turned to her sharply, but she ignored Sansa's obvious disapproval with the lack of propriety and manners like she ignored him otherwise -- suddenly so fascinated with the book in her lap. **  
**

"Can't say why," he grit out. He was always so quick to bristle back to her anger, like fire and oil. She could feel him staring still, and she briefly observed she was trying to read her book upside down. "Now I'm not so sure what made me want to see m'lady high." **  
**

Sansa was starting to say something, but she talked over her, raising her chin slightly. "Well, now you've seen me. You can leave."  **  
**

He laughed, and it wasn't the warm laughter that sounded nice and deep and happy. "Is m'lady giving me permission to leave then?" **  
**

"Don't call me that!" She glowered for good measure, twice now slamming the covers of her book shut. "And don't think it can't be an _order_ , not just permission." It didn't make sense, but her cheeks were flushing in anger. **  
**

"Oh, so you're ordering me to leave, and that's why you've been avoiding me, too?" **  
**

The tips of his ears were turning red in his fury as he stalked closer, and neither of them heard Sansa before she took her leave. "I haven't been avoiding you, Stupid!" Her pitch rose an octave when she lied. "I've been here this entire time!" **  
**

"And yesterday? Every time I saw you, you were quick to head in the other direction." His smile wasn't a smile.

She needed to stand, so she stood, stepping up in her chair so she towered over him. "I'm surprised you even noticed! Aren't you supposed to be gathering your things so you can go? Since you've not put too much thought into staying here, you can go back to that inn at the Crossroads and smith there since you won't here!" **  
**

He stared up to her with a look she couldn't quite place, silent. It only had her fuming, all her hurts boiling to the surface as her hands shook. **  
**

"And I even wanted you here!" she continued. "We were supposed to reclaim Winterfell so you could forge things here and not abandon the pack! I'll bet you even liked it, didn't you? Knighted by the Brotherhood traitors and helping those doing poorly and killing whenever it was convenient. Bet that warmed your blood like only killing can, more than any whore could!" She didn't know what she was saying, but she couldn't seem to stop. **  
**

"Does it make you feel like that?" He was stoic as ever as he watched her. **  
**

She shook her head stiffly. She needed to calm herself. Fear cut deeper than swords. "Killing doesn't make me feel anything." **  
**

The look on his face told her he believed her, and she felt stupid when she made out a purplish bruise under the left side of his jaw's stubble. "I didn't stay with the Brotherhood," he told her.  **  
**

She snorted in response. "They admire your loyalty." **  
**

"They aren't worth a bastard's loyalty." **  
**

"I didn't know they had any."  **  
**

She saw his mouth twitch, and his eyes were so soft and blue looking up at her. "They can." **  
**

Her fingers bit into the fabric of her trousers, and she decided she didn't like being this tall. "If you had to, where would you go?" **  
**

"I haven't thought about it, Arya." He sounded exasperated, like she was a child again. **  
**

"..Anywhere else?"  **  
**

"Where I'm going to go," and she resigned to not ask him if he'd plan to stay in Winterfell.  **  
**

"You haven't thought about staying here?" **  
**

She failed; the words were out before she could snatch them back, and it was always like this. Her snapping at him, his quiet calm. He took a last step forward, reaching out a hand to help her off her seat. "I have." **  
**

There was a pause before she took it, stepping down opposite him. His fingers had always been callused, she guessed, and his shoulders seemed broader than they had the day before last. She hadn't paid attention before. "You're going to leave," she said. Her pinned voice didn't make it a question. **  
**

He was still looking at her like that, and her blood felt warmer. She didn't want to look at him, couldn't, so she stared at the empty sheets of paper Sansa left behind. "What is there for me in the South?" He asked her. "Sand at the bottom, King's Landing in the center, and land in between? Nothing in Braavos neither." **  
**

Her head snapped up, and had he been to Braavos? Volantis? The free city? "You left the seven kingdoms?" **  
**

He was looking at her like that again. "I did." **  
**

Why didn't he ever say what he meant? Couldn't he just tell her why he'd went there and left again? Why he came back? **  
**

Oh.  **  
**

Well, she knew that part, but her defenses were brazen once more. "I'm not sure why you left," she quipped, trying to force the annoyance from her voice.  **  
**

"Rumors said you were there. Rumors, and most thought you'd been long dead," he explained. **  
**

And he didn't ask why she'd been to Braavos, but he didn't need to, did he? "The Faceless Men," she confessed quietly. "That's where I went." When he didn't say anything for a few moments, a feeling of dread started to settle in her stomach.  **  
**

She fully noticed Sansa's absence then, and she wondered what she was going to say before Gendry barged in. She thought of what it'd have been like if Gendry had been properly announced before he entered, if Sansa had summoned tea and cakes prior, if she'd suggested they walk around for fresh air or some nonsense like that.  **  
**

"I became No One," she told him, challenging his stare as she met his gaze. "To forget Westeros and all the people in it." **  
**

He looked at her strangely, like he was trying to see something in her, like he was watching her walk away to scout terrain before his stupid self got captured. "Then why are _you_  here?" he asked softly. **  
**

"I couldn't forget." Not her father nor her mother. Robb. Jon, Bran, Rickon, Sansa. Winterfell. "I'm Arya, of House Stark," she reminded him. "I couldn't forget everything I've lost and everything that still remained -- even if I thought I could ignore it." **  
**

She would always be a Stark, always had been. Her name couldn't change like some faces did, and there was a reason she'd never been able to let Needle drift to the bottom of the sea. It represented everyone she knew and everyone she loved, and she couldn't leave them behind forever.  **  
**

"..So when the war came to a close --"  **  
**

She nodded to his look of uncertainty. "I wasn't here." **  
**

"And you weren't killed by the Freys," he said, looking at her with that face again. His confusion had changed to amazement somewhere, and it was soft again. **  
**

"Nor the Hound." **  
**

"Or any man looking for a few silver coins. But I came back when I heard whispers of Bran and Rickon. And then Sansa, and then Jon had been legitimized a Stark by Robb before he died, only no one knew, and then Lady St-- Mother, and Winterfell was rebuilt, and I needed to be where I belonged." Where she was home. **  
**

In a whisper, he breathed, "You survived," though she knew he'd assured himself of this the day before last. They'd both made it here. It seemed different just now. "It was for you," he added. **  
**

Her brows arched in question, and she didn't know when he'd gotten so close to her. But he smelled like the North. Outside and soap and smoke and Gendry, and it was comforting. "What was?" **  
**

"Braavos." His ears were still red, and she understood, and she remembered. **  
**

"The Brotherhood came here shortly after I did. One of their riders was wearing your bull-headed helm, but when I went up to him, his hair was red and his eyes green." It wasn't him, and she could still see Jon's quizzical expression when she'd angrily thrown the helmet at the man. **  
**

"He's a good lad," he offered. "I gave it to him."

He didn't notice Arya tense. " _Why?_ " **** _ **  
**_

And looking at him, she thought he was holding something back. "I didn't need it anymore," he answered lowly.  **  
**

Puzzled, she frowned up at him. "Why not? You loved that helm, it meant so much to you." **  
**

Surprising her, he chuckled, his eyes bright. "Any other questions?" he teased. "Gonna try to hit me again? Yell some more?" **  
**

"Maybe," she muttered. But she had been angry, and he was being stupid. "Are you?" **  
**

"Am I what, m'lady?" **  
**

Her hands slapped against his chest as she shoved him, and she stubbornly wasn't going to say it again.  **  
**

"I don't figure to leave after I just found you," he said, looking at her like she was dim-witted. **  
**

"But you didn't say that at the feast." **  
**

"I didn't know I wasn't." She shoved him again. "I didn't know if I'd be welcome here," he tried again.  **  
**

He almost looked pained saying that, she thought, but in a flicker, whatever he was feeling changed, and he was looking at her like that again. She didn't notice the freckle beneath his left eye before. "I didn't know if you wanted me here," he corrected in a gentle tone, and before she shoved against his chest again, he caught both her wrists.  **  
**

"And I know you do," he said smugly. And he told her how he'd see Mikken and talk to Jon on the 'morrow before he could think himself out of it.  **  
**

He didn't know what he'd do yet exactly, but maybe he didn't have to think about that now. He was going to stay, and at the least, he'd be guaranteed warmth and food and a roof and stable work until whenever -- with his m'lady never too far away.  **  
**

She finally smiled in that cheeky way she grinned, and "good," she murmured in finality, quickly throwing her arms around him as he laughed again.   **  
**

And just like that, they were best friends again, time and distance forgotten when she shrugged away from him before he could return the embrace. "Sansa was here earlier." **  
**

"Oh," he frowned, holding open the door for her while she gathered her things. But then he was looking at her again. "I'll formally apologize and beg her pardon soon." **  
**

"At dinner," she told him in the tone he knew he couldn't argue with. "She told me you've been eating in the kitchens. Don't." He looked unsure, but she elbowed him once they reached the corridor. "Stupid. You're a guest of the Starks of Winterfell now. You're one of us." As if that explained everything. **  
**

The air was cold when they made it out the gate's doors, and they both laughed at nothing. **  
**


	4. I Never Meant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It could have felt like home already, that forge. Shelves and stores of crafted works, armor lined for display with mantles and sheens of swords and maces and shields scattered in projects. A fire was burning, and an anvil was set with a hammer idle atop it, and Gendry didn't know how much he missed the feeling of a tool in hand 'till now, how he missed the solace of nothing but pounded, shapeless metal coming to life and taking form with power and sweat and steel.

The days had been getting shorter and getting colder, and his forge's fire was blazing in the small hovel. It was dark save the glow of the steel in the fire's light, and inch by inch, whetstone and whetstone, his hammer had pounded into the extra scraps of metal until the steel had formed into a blade.

He was devoted to his task, and _hammer, hammer, hammer_ , all of his day's precision had been spent ensuring the small blade was balanced. Quick. Fierce in-hand and elegant in its own scripted language.

He remembered.

The hilt was almost tiny, _adorable_ , he recollected with a small smirk, meant for a hand not as large or gruff as his. His callused fingertips traced the rim of the blade's scabbard with a delicate gentleness he wasn't sure he could muster, and the hilt looked almost gold in the firelight.

He missed her. She'd have likely told him everything wrong with the sword he crafted from memory, but the feeling was all he had. It was balanced. It was a strong steel. It was like _Needle_ , slim and pliable and lethal, and he carefully set the sword atop a shelf with others crafted exactly like it.

But not before one of the young orphan boys with sunny hair and grey eyes came to bring him his lunch like he usually did a couple days a week. The lad's seven year old eyes widened in awe as the small sword fit for a child gleamed, and Gendry ruffled the boy's hair as he laughed.

"Maybe one day." And maybe one day.

He closed the store to the forge just a little ways aways from the Crossroads Inn, but not before throwing a brief glance to the helmet he'd forged as the head of a direwolf where the bull used to be.

Maybe today, since that day had been one of his last in a smithy until now.

He told Arya he'd talk to Mikken, then her brother, and oh, he laughed, because what kind of fool needed to talk to a lord about working as a blacksmith? It wasn't just about blacksmithing -- he wasn't _that_  stupid, regardless of what his m'lady thought. He'd prepare himself for the interrogation and stoic gaze he came to expect from the Lord Stark who would ask him all bits of _rubbish_ and _shit questions_  to hear Arya tell it, but he was here to work.

Just like the last time, he was apprentice to Master Mott when he said he was to join the Night's Watch, and that's all he knew. So what was Winterfell? The Castle's smithy, and if his best friend still wanted to talk his ear off like the night prior, lurking in corridor shadows and watching their breath turn to clouds of hot air in front of them, then what was the matter with that?

Lots, maybe, but he wasn't going to think about that. Or how she'd doubled over in her laughter, snorting silently in hysterics at one of his jokes.

One foot in the front of the other, he followed the signs of the dark, puffy smoke lingering away from a building just off and away the main courtyard. The clouds were grey but the air fresh, and the first breath of the muggy, smoke-fueled air in the forge felt more welcoming to his lungs than any stream of sunshine or bubbling brook in fresh and free nature.

It could have felt like home already, that forge. Shelves and stores of crafted works, armor lined for display with mantles and sheens of swords and maces and shields scattered in projects. A fire was burning, and an anvil was set with a hammer idle atop it, and Gendry didn't know how much he missed the feeling of a tool in hand 'till now, how he missed the solace of nothing but pounded, shapeless metal coming to life and taking form with power and sweat and steel.

Except -- the hovel looked empty, abandoned by most means. He noticed the hilt of a sword stuck in a basin of cold water, but what fool left a piece of work there for too long?

The fool that just grunted, likely, from somewhere inside the light-dark rooms. He cast a cursory glance around the shop for the source of the strained heaves, but he didn't see anyone. Nothing but a curtain dividing what he suspected was to be some sort of living quarters, and "Pardon," he called, tugging away the harsh cloth with another glance.

"Would ya mind, lad?" An older man grunted, struggling under the weight of crate stacked atop crate. Gendry was next to him at once, eyes politely averted from the mess of the room as a roll of his shoulders flexed his grip around the boxes. He bore most, then all the weight with little effort, grunting as the older man, Mikken, he guessed, wiped sweat from his brow. "Thank ya, boy."

His voice was weathered, almost leathery-sounding, but kind, and master smiths weren't all too terrible. "Where?" He rasped out, his head barely visible over the top of the highest crate.

"In here," Mikken told him, holding open the cloth tie to the rest of the forge. He smiled when Gendry easily followed, and he gestured to the right, empty patch of wall. "They told me you'd come along today, sooner or later. What's your name, boy?"

His hands were starting to sweat, and he brushed his palms against his trousers before shaking the smith's outstretched hand. "Gendry Waters," he smiled. He didn't feel like himself when he gave his name as Ser Gendry of Hollow Hill. What'd that bald man that sent him to Yoren tell him? Life was ironic.

"Mikken," the older fellow introduced simply. "How old are ya, Gendry?"

"Twenty and two. Is there anything else I can help you with?"

The older man nodded as he watched Gendry move about. Tall, broad. Obviously strong. Young. "Was movin' all the storage metal and weaponry out that back room, y'see," he explained. "It's meant to be lived in, keeps cool enough, but I had m'own simple place with my family. Figured you'd like stayin' back there? Don't know if you've got a girl you plan on weddin' and keepin' house with."

He blanched, and Mikken snorted. "Back room's fine." He moved over to a counter, and while he couldn't read, he knew which mark meant what. "These the last of the work orders?" It wasn't _really_  a question, not when he'd moved to the lone anvil and taken the hammer in hand.

"Aye," Mikken smiled, amused by some silent joke. The Seven with the Smith sent him an apprentice that wasn't an apprentice in need of training, and he took to the forge like he was born to it.

The sword sheathed in the bucket was put to a whetstone as Gendry worked, and a shield took the sword's place before a helmet replaced that, order after order, finishing touches completing each request. It was quiet, the work, somehow amidst the ringing and the slamming of iron to iron, and his tunics had long been discarded to the floor.

It was nearly dusk when Mikken emerged from the back room he'd been clearing out, a basin and a spoon in hand. "Drink," he offered kindly, and Gendry did with a grateful nod. "You take to it, the smithy."

"Was sold to a smithy in King's Landing when I was a boy," he explained, his breaths hard. He took another greedy mouthful of the cool water before reaching for the finished shield, offering it up for inspection.

The master was silent a moment, vague examination given to the work before he handed it back. "The Shop's yours," he said, and he slapped Gendry on the shoulder. "You can run it on the 'morrow if you'd be willin'. I've got my grandchildren to see grow."

"I understand that," Gendry heard himself saying. But he -- didn't really, and awkwardly, he ran his hands though his hair. "Uh. Tomorrow. But if there's anything left you got to take care of --"

Mikken shrugged him off, shifting the crate he held in his arms. "Yours now. The masters inside can help you with the financial specifics," he told him, chuckling deeply. "Don't worry about it, lad! I'm goin' home."

And he did, still laughing at something and leaving Gendry puzzled. He briefly considered the horror of a shop slippin' under, but this smithy belonged to the castle. The only real threat was him, wasn't it?

He didn't want to think about being gelded. But there was one last project left to finish before the night got too dark. So _hammer, hammer, hammer_ , into the fire and out. Sweat was beading along his brow, and he felt the familiar ache of unworked muscles start to throb in his arms and back. But he loved it.

It had been nearly an hour into his work, the steel for the newest sword was cooling as he hammered to flatness a blade he thought needed reworking, when he heard it.

Or didn't hear it, rather, but he wasn't surprised when her shadow drew nearer, and she walked in like she owned the smithy personally, even though he didn't want to think about those details. "What are you doing?" she asked, and he knew he'd told her he didn't like interruptions when he was working before.

He didn't mind so much, and he was the fool that set a sword in the basin of cool water for too long as he turned to her. Was that blue or purple? Over the wintery dark grey gown color that suited her better than Sansa, he thought. "Working," he offered, rubbing his hand across his face. Sweat was wiped away, but he thought the oil and grease smudged by his hands did more harm than good to his face. "What are you doing?"

She was in another fancy gown he _knew_  she couldn't like, with her hair more elaborately styled than it had been the day before. And she -- "You look nice," he said suddenly, interrupting whatever she was about to say. He smirked a little, and seven hells, where'd he toss his tunic to? "Like a lady, even without your acorns."

He threw a quick glance to her, and if she was asked, she wasn't looking at his bare back. "You're bruised." She frowned, pointing to his side. He remembered the guard striking him in the courtyard, and his skin was marred purple.

He arched a brow as she came nearer with a hand extended for the bruises overlying his ribs, and he could tell she was starting to sweat. "I've had worse, y'know."

She only hummed in response. Why were her hands cold? "And you'll have worse if you tell me I look like a lady again," she snickered, lightly slapping his bruise.

He winced, but she only laughed harder at his expression. "A _proper_  lady!" If his memory served correctly. She moved to shove at him. "Nice, though," he added as an afterthought, easily catching both her wrists before she could hit him again. But Arya Stark, the girl of many talents, snorted, shoving her skirted knee between his legs like she had years ago just to laugh at his pained groan.

"I won't -- tell y-you that smell nice now," he grunted, sore where he really didn't need to be. "Don't laugh!" he shouted defensively, but he was laughing, too, and the fire was hot around them.

He easily took both her wrists in just one of his hands, and the look in her eyes told him she remembered what happened after the banter. She started squirming and wriggling like mad, trying to fold in on herself to ward off his free hand at her side. "Stop!" she warned half-heartedly, already starting to giggle. He hadn't even began tickling her yet. "You stink!"

And it was the Acorn Hall, and he didn't know how they made it to the dirty floor like they did then, his soot-smudged fingers attacking her right side with tickles like he knew she was ticklish. He laughed as she giggled beneath him, kicking and writhing and flinching in her fight for both her hands. "Stop!" she choked, breathless. Her laughs had her sides aching while she struggled.

"Say it!" he snorted, leaving her wrists to garnish her left side with more assaulting tickles, calluses smooth against blue muslin.

"Say wh--" she gasped and squealed a very not-Arya squeal. Tears were starting to wet her eyelids, and her silent giggles were more panting breaths than laughs.

And he hated how his gaze dropped to her strained breaths against that low neckline of the dress she wore and ruined beneath him, and a new sheen of scarlet coated his face as his hands went still.

Taking advantage of his lapse, she shoved her elbow against his ribs (she'd learned the hard way that he wasn't ticklish), knocking him aside and under her so she leaned over him instead.

Her dress shouldn't have been kicked up like that against both her legs, and her hair looked mostly ruined. He didn't know how ashes got to be smudged on her nose, but he was reaching up to wipe it away before he thought better of it. He did stink after all, hours of sweat and smoke and gross leaving him smelling ripe, he guessed, but she still only laughed. A laughter he didn't trust, and he felt her hands when he realized she hadn't moved them.

"I was supposed to properly fetch you for dinner," she admitted, and her hands were heavy where they rested against his chest, her right palm set over his hammering heart.

"You didn't do good," he snickered.

The back of his head must have slammed against the stone floor when she'd flipped them; it hurt. But she didn't.

She grinned down at him, and the sweat wetting her hair was starting to curl. "But I won," and he wouldn't deny that. "You're still going." Standing nimbly, she straightened the hem of her dress so it wasn't wrinkled around her knees. "As much as you shouldn't," she murmured, her face still red though she'd been sobered from hysteric for moments, "you should put on a shirt."

He stared at her from the floor, and she was grinning again, teasing, her eyes moving along his torso before meeting his.

His muscled and sweat-laden torso.

Seven hells.

"I'll change first."

"Nope," she said, giving up on fixing her hair. "There isn't time. Think anyone will notice?"

He looked to her, looking at him, looking down to herself, and he couldn't decide if she really cared or not.

"No." But yes. She was beautiful, even if her hair was ruined, her dress dirty with a tear at the hem, and -- "Where are you goin'?"

He heard that wicked laughter again when she shouted something he couldn't quite catch. So he pulled on his shirt, and it looked better than he did, at least, but for dinner with the lords and ladies of Winterfell?

Seven hells.

No one said anything when he entered, reeking and covered in soot from the forge, but Jon asked him questions about the smithy, and Gendry was happy to tell him how he'd be running it from tomorrow on.

And then everyday on, and Arya hadn't wiped the ash from her nose until Rickon pointed it out.


	5. To Let You Down

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you yield?" She pressed Needle closer to his throat, his head reflexively lulling back as he blinked his focus up to her.
> 
> And it was warm, too warm, with sweat damp in his hair and beading along her neck and under her chin and slicking her clothes where she, and him, and too warm, too -- "Arya," he repeated with a low tone of urgency, hearing her exerted breaths quicken.

Gendry had been right about the forge. It wasn't financially under, but it was old.

"If there's anything you need," Jon told him, his eyes stern and kind, "don't hesitate to ask."

"Thank you, m'lord. I will." But would he? He couldn't even meet Jon's gaze out of polite, lowborn respect. And he had been served a kindness by being given the smithy, _gods_ , by just being permitted to stay, and that had him unwilling to ask too much more of the Starks. He could make do with what he didn't have and save up for what he needed. Everything.

He was used to it, granted, but the wrongfully prideful parts of him were hesitant to show his new, humble abode to the youngest Stark sister each time she walked into the forge.

And he knew for true now, she did indirectly own it by association.

"You are doing us a kindness, Gendry."

To his surprise, Jon looked serious, rousing him from his thoughts. "..M'lord?"

"Decent smiths are hard to find, even harder, skilled ones," he said, looking years and years older in his seriousness. "We are fortunate to have you." Even if some called the Brotherhood traitors.

But he didn't tell him there was no need to thank him, nor that it was his honor and privilege he serve. "I, uh." He cleared smoke from his throat, vaguely gesturing to the warm smithy walls around them. "I was checking the vents, and they haven't been.. working proper in a few years, by the looks of it."

After a moment, Jon nodded, and it was a start.

\- -- - -- -

Repairs on the smithy commenced within days, and the back room was by far the most impressive Arya had ever seen with a spacey enough floor and metallic looking furniture.

"I think she's going to marry Willas Tyrell," she said, all-knowledgable tone as always. Her legs were swinging off the anvil she perched on, and she was the self-proclaimed exception to his dislike of interruptions whilst working.

She wasn't wrong, but if she could barely hear herself over the sounds of his hammer ringing steel on steel, then he couldn't hear her. Oh, well. She stuffed another peach tart into her mouth, and for bringing the entire tray for him, half its treats had vanished to her stomach.

When he finally set his finished work aside, sweaty handprints were visible on his leather apron. "Who?"

"Sansa."

She held her tray of desserts out to him, but he moved towards a basin instead, splashing his face with the cool water. "And?"

"And I think they'll wed."

"They in love?"

And she feels silly now that she never _really_ considered it. Did Sansa love Willas Tyrell? Did Willas love Sansa? Did she want to live in Highgarden? Did she _really_ want to marry another lord? "Doesn't matter," she tells him with a shrug, her nose crinkling.

He stared at her, almost smiling at her annoyance. "You don't think love matters in a marriage?"

"Not if it's arranged," she easily answered.

And it was easy, their open, free conversation. So easy he almost forgot arranged marriages were a possibility, if she judged by his face. "There is a table here," he murmured instead when he reached for one of her untouched plates, seating himself on the warm floor. "I've heard love grows sometimes, though, doesn't it?"

She watched him greedily eat, how he seemed so comfortable there with gulping mouthfuls, and she slid from her perch to plop down next to him. "It did with my mother and father."

He had the decency to swallow before speaking, pretending she didn't knick a bite of the steak from his plate. "Your mum was s'posed to marry your uncle first, right?"

"Right. And my aunt was to marry Robert Baratheon, but he had to wed that bitch," he gave her a look, "Cersei, instead. An arranged marriage. Even the seven hells knew they were miserable together."

"But it's expected," he said slowly. He cut more bits of his venison steak just for her -- nevermind there was another plate set somewhere. "It's duty."

"It's being traded like livestock."

"It's.. alliances." Or something, something, he didn't really understand. He just knew it happened, and it likely would.

"Here," she murmured, shifting just a smidgen to reach a paper folded in her trouser's pocket. "One of his letters."

Glancing to her, his dark brows furrowed. "Whose?" He stared down to the parchment, but.. words he couldn't read. The letter _a_ , he knew that one.

"Stupid," she muttered. "Willas. One of his letters to Sansa."

He didn't tell her that was a violation of property, nor that he couldn't read the letter. "..And he?"

Something in her changed, something gentle curling her mouth as she pressed nearer to him. Her arm rest against his, and no, no, her cheeks weren't pink, she didn't blush like a childish girl, not like Sansa, like they never touched before. "Here," she instructed, scanning the nearly scripted paragraphs until -- "I," she read, pointing to the letter-word.

But he was only looking at her, a lopsided smile brightening the blue in his eyes. "I," he repeated.

"Am." She wasn't sure how to teach, and she knew she was nowhere near patient enough, but she restated the word and traced the two letters, glancing up to his face with a slow smile of her own. "More than happy to hear you've been in good spirits," she continued. "I find myself in a similar state; sunshine is blossoming all around the gardens and spreading its warmth to all aspects, but it can not compare to the warm feeling settling over my heart when another letter arrives. And," she paused, taking on a mock-masculine tone, "all seven of your past letters from the day before last did arrive, and no, my dear, you aren't a bother to me with your constant word."

"Seven?" he asked in shock, absently reaching for the tray of peach pastries. "A day?"

"Shhh," she protested, tapping the start of the next line. "Listen. Hearing of your day's happenings let me feel as immersed in your world as I one day hope to be. It's been far too long since I saw you last, Sansa, but I hope the gods will smile on us soon." She looked back up to Gendry, watching him frown down at the letters he tried to make sense of. All dark, concentrated brows, that almost pained, focused expression that told him he was thinking too hard on something. His jaw squared and his nose sharp, and..  _he's handsome_ , she realized, thinking that's what Sansa would think and faun over. But she'd always knew that about him. He was Gendry.

"He's going to come here soon, he says," she mumbled. "To see her again. He doesn't say he loves her, though."

"He doesn't have to." His voice was low, and he gestured to the letter as he looked to her. "It might be unsaid, but they know."

"He should tell her," she persisted, gently folding the parchment back to a neat square she pocketed. "And he'll marry her. I'd want to be told. I'd want a love letter, too." She was always so nonchalant, so casual.

If he couldn't read, he knew she knew he couldn't write, but maybe he'd learn. Maybe it was time to get back to forging.

\- -- - -- -

"Can you teach me?"

Gendry nearly hammered his hand by mistake, snapping his eyes to his visitor. Rickon. "To smith? He set down the helmet he was working on and wiped the sweat from his brow.

The boy eagerly nodded, beaming as he waved the wooden training sword in his hand. "And to fight!"

"..Doesn't Arya teach you? And how'd your family feel about you learning to smith?"

He stifled a laugh as Rickon stood up to make himself taller. "But you could teach me how to actually _beat_ her, right?"

And he suddenly wondered if he could. "I don't know," he admitted, thinking on how members of Lord Stark's guards knew better than to cross blades with Arya. He was proud for just a moment. Rickon was laughing at him.

"You can't, can you?"

"We haven't sparred in years, but I didn't know how to wield a blade all proper then," he explained. "I'm stronger, but you know she's quicker than she looks. It's helpful in a fight."

\- -- - -- -

And it was.

But he didn't want to hurt his m'lady, and he told her that often and loudly -- to her, to the guards watching. But she sneered and demanded they leave them, and who'd refuse Arya of House Stark, an heiress to Winterfell?

He couldn't even refuse just Arry.

So he couldn't just decline her demand that they do actually fight, even though half a dozen and thrice more reasons crossed his mind. "I'll hurt you," he had told her.

She only laughed again, bright and unabashed, and he turned his red face away when she'd unbuttoned her jerkin to just the tunic beneath. "I'll hurt _you_."

He smiled, stretching both arms overhead and behind him. "I'm stronger than you."

"I'm quicker than you," she had quipped, unsheathing Needle.

And oh.

He had landed on his back within moments. If he was being honest with himself, it wasn't just because he didn't want to hurt her, though his caution had kept a few well-aimed blows of his own from striking her. She danced, and he blocked, and _it's just like water-dancing_ , if he heard her wicked grin correctly. A step to the left, a parry. She feinted to the left, and he swung, but what could have sliced her shoulder was just a tap that knicked the white linen of her blouse.

His gentleness had only infuriated her, and she'd kicked him when he was too busy laughing at how adorable she looked when she was feisty. He was still laughing when she had pinned him to submission, and he wasn't sure when she'd disarmed him or how he managed to remain standing with his wristguards catching the slashes she thrusted at him, but he knew he didn't want to hurt her.

So he hadn't, and her sword was held against his throat in response, and _seven bloody hells_ , he wasn't seeing straight with her sitting atop him like that. "Arya," he grit out, all too aware of her thighs around him, of her --

"Do you yield?" She pressed Needle closer to his throat, his head reflexively lulling back as he blinked his focus up to her.

And it was warm, too warm, with sweat damp in his hair and beading along her neck and under her chin and slicking her clothes where she, and him, and too warm, too -- "Arya," he repeated with a low tone of urgency, hearing her exerted breaths quicken.

"Yield," she reiterated, leaning forward so the sword-edge was everstill at his pulse point, her hips shifting against him in her leverage. "Y--"

She was cut off by his low groan, and she was trying to move again until he quickly stilled her, both his hands gripping her thighs lightly. "Don't," he hushed out, clearing the feeling from his throat since he was feeling.. her, and oh, gods, the blood was leaving his face to beneath her, and he needed to not think of her thighs squeezing around him, of her just over him, of how _good_  her weight felt atop him, and she, and how her breaths were still eratic. "Don't move," he said with more urgency. She tensed, frozen, and he hastily cleared his throat again. "Like that."

And he was grateful she'd demanded her guard leave her be, he'd surely be gelded for true or thrown into a cell or taken by a knife or _something_. He needed to not --  _I can kiss her_ , he thought for one brief moment, dazing a look up to her pink cheeks, her bright grey eyes, her parted lips. She was so close to him, so beautiful. His sweaty palms dampened the cloth of her trousers.

"Gendry," she whispered. Brave, fierce, strong Arya, looking so vulnerable and nervous, he might have laughed if he wasn't starting to harden beneath the warmth of her. "I'm.. I yield," she said in the same barely audible tone.

He nearly gasped when she took Needle away from his throat, and he'd never seen her discard the cherished blade so carelessly before. "You can.." he started unsurely, slowly loosening his grip at her legs with all his restraint to not press up against her like some lusty greenboy that --

"Yes!" she half-shrieked, bounding up to her feet in a quick, fluid motion. "I'll -- g'bye!" She made a quick grab for Needle and her jerkin, and she left him there.

\- -- - -- -

He cursed himself and the fool of a Waters he was.

He'd knicked his left hand with a blade he'd carelessly fastened, and he'd nearly crushed his foot with a whetstone, but he couldn't sleep, and the moon told him it wasn't the middle of the night yet. He'd burn the midnight oils if he had to, anything to distract him from earlier. He was as stupid as she said, letting himself get such a rise. He was stupid.

And he likely looked it when he took a fighting stance, his blacksmithing hammer raised in defense when a shadow darkened the smithy's entry. "Who's there?" he gruffly demanded, prepared to swing.

Her eyeroll was practically audible. "What are you going to do?" Arya snickered. "Crush me to death? It's me!"

"I thought you were --" he wasn't about to say burglar or assassin. He hurried her inside instead, frowning at how flippant she seemed. "Seven hells, Arya. It's the middle of the night. What are you doing here?"

And it was the first he had seen her hair down and loose, though it was messy as always. There were dark circles under her eyes, and she never seemed to be this quiet. "I couldn't sleep," she answered after a moment. She crossed her arms over the knee-length blouse she wore, and he saw the dirt-stains at her pant legs from earlier. "I had a nightmare."

She sounded smaller somehow, more like the child she used to be, and he felt his awkward resolve crumbling. "Whatever it was, Arya, it was just a dream." He tried to smile for her, neatly setting his hammer atop the anvil.

"Faces," she whispered, and he wasn't going to pry or demand explanations. "..Can you stay with me?" He was looking at her like that again, and she was silly, childish, about to walk away with a nonchalant laugh and her growing dread if he didn't say something.

"Actually," his lopsided grin, "this is my hovel. You'd be staying with me."

Her eyes flashed to his, and she tried to smile, too, but something about her looked so shaken. But she came here. To him. And he didn't consider what might happen should anyone find them on his confoundedly small bed, and she didn't say anything for the rest of the night, but she didn't need to.

She curled up next to him like she always forever used to, her arms curved in front of her with one hand fisted in the back of his shirt. He heard her snoring before too long, though, quiet and nasally like he remembered, and he missed the feel of her knobby knees biting into his back more than he'd openly admit. 

He dreamed.


	6. Please Don't Let On I'm Not Here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He mumbles that it's nothing, but she knows he's always more and more quiet when he's upset. She knows. "Just thinking," he tells her, and he has that pained expression that's gotten more serious since he became a man grown, and he hasn't seemed to really smile since he woke.

"You've been so quiet, Gendry!"

She slammed her ale onto the table in protest, and he could hear the sneers from surrounding patrons.

He'd woken with his arm around her, gentle, his lips pressed to her hair. And if he was being honest with himself, and oh, how he never seems to be anymore, he half-expected to wake alone with her meager portion of his cot-bed cold and empty. But she was there, her fists curled like they always used to be in her sleep, reminding him of years ago where he always still tried to soothe her nightmares.

His arm and shoulder had been stiff in slumber beneath her head, and "Morning," he heard his voice rumble, gruff and deep and groggy.

He had smiled when he saw life flutter behind her eyelids, and _oh_ _no_. Her nose was scrunching, her eyes were squeezing closed, there was space between them but not much, and he could feel her stretching. He could get used to the feel of her in his arms, how his bed suited her since his larger bulk was practically against the wall with most of the empty space around her, and oh, no, he could get used to this.

Or he could, but she was suddenly tense, suddenly terrified, and she had to remind herself that she was Arya Stark in those scant moments she chose to be awake or not.

She did, and she was, and she is Arya, and he is Gendry, and there weren't any more faces, weren't any more names, and breathing was easy again. So "Morning," she repeated, her voice scratchy with another yawn.

Her smile looked real, really real, and he had almost stopped himself from asking because she hated it. "You alright?"

He frowned when she rolled her eyes. At least until he started grinning again. His arm was still asleep. "We should go somewhere," she told him.

And he thinks about how wolves are always running, always hiding away, mangy and fierce and grisly when rage overtakes them, and it might make sense.

It did, and all the gods must be laughing since he enjoyed following and being bossed around by a girl half his size -- a girl who was steadily drinking her weight in ale he knew wasn't honeyed down.

Her cheeks were starting to flush from the alcohol though she couldn't be drunk yet, and she was loud, loud, almost shouting at him in her humor.

"So quiet!" she repeated, contorting her face to mock his scowl. "So serious." And she loses it, doubling over.

When she had picked herself out of bed this morning, the back of his neck went red. She was easily moving up and about, tugging off her overshirt to replace with one of his. "Somewhere. Just for today?" But he wasn't listening, couldn't when he saw the skim of skin at her hip all pale and looking warm, and his eyes were flashing away instantly. He ran a hand through his bed-messed hair, feeling the mess of unruly ebon locks, but she was laughing at him. " _Relax_ , alright? It's just skin."

He gave her a look, and he did just fine with a second day spent in this tunic, thank you. No changing in front of her. He brought his legs over to the edge of the bed and started feeling around for his boots with a huff.

A noble knight would have sent her back out when she came, not invited her to his bed -- though she did request he stay -- and frown at her as she re-braided her hair. A noble knight wouldn't have let a highborn lady stay when he was baseborn improper. It wasn't right.

"I see your chest all the time," she sniped, like that made all the difference.

"Not much to see, m'lady."

She almost looked as if she would say something but didn't, her quip failing on her tongue as she watched him. And saw him, and _Gendry_ , and she didn't like the way he was frowning at nothing. "We're going," she insisted without asking, absently stomping her foot. "I'll get someone to saddle the horses."

"I have to work today." Everyday. His place, his work, his duty; he was already falling behind schedule, and who knew where she even wanted to go?

"Nope," she had pressed, "you don't." If she said so.

"But hurry up, the sun's rising. We need to leave soon."

And she was gone, out as quickly as she came in, leaving him wondering again why she hadn't disappeared before morning, or why no one had noticed her absence, or why he was following after her like he always did, even on the days his lack of self-worth hit him like one of her punches.

Any trouble could find them in the next village's tavern. No one would recognize him, there wasn't much to know, and by the looks of it, no one paid her any mind. Who expected the lost princess of Winterfell to be dressed as a man? He only wonders why they don't, or why she looks more like his m'lady in breeches and a dingy shirt than an extravagant gown of silks and embroideries.

She was finally quieting down, sobering up, when she starts cackling again. "That woman has been _looking_ at you since we came in, and you won't even glance at her!"

He looks down to Arya for almost the first time, and she's draining another tankard while he's still nursing his first. "Should I?" he hears himself asking dryly.

She's laughing again, bright and warm, and he's not focusing on her complaints about the whore. She said that no, he shouldn't, so he isn't, and to hear her tell it, no hair could be that yellow naturally like no teats could be anymore in that other man's face.

He had glowered at the stableboy when he was looking at Arya, and he scowled at him next when he japed an inappropriate remark about her and him. "No," he ground out in response to the lad's congratulatory, accusing remark, and nevermind that she's heard worse from even Gendry's mouth, no one should speak so vilely within a lady's earshot. Not when the lewd remarks are impossible and _almost un_ thinkable and teasing and cruel and no.

They were half an hour outside the reach of Winterfell when she asked him. "You alright?"

A comfortable silence was sidled between them, and she felt at home in the midst of the chilled air and the endlessly grey sky. The opposite of him, it seemed, his severe frown silent as they rode towards a neighboring village. "I am," he told her simply, and when his horse fell behind hers a proper pace, she slowed hers, too.

But maybe since he never told her when he thought she was lying, she didn't press him when he was.

Not until now.

"You're not even drinking properly," she accuses. And fierce Arya, whining. He wants to be upset, wants to glower at her, but he's setting down his ale, and she's nearly giggling again. "When's the last time you were really drunk, anyways?"

"Since I was at the Crossroads, I think. It's been a while."

"How long's that?"

He doesn't have any trouble glowering at her now, and somewhere, the gods are laughing at how a stag doesn't turn to his drink. "Almost a year," he answers.

"And why's that?"

It's adorable, the way she slams her mug gently on the tabletop each time she sets it down. There's an easiness in her posture, how she's sitting that -- "How often?" He scratched at his four day stubbled jaw, biting back the sudden worry. "..Do you drink?"

"I don't." She stares at his face, and whatever she sees has her losing it again. Her eyes are burning as she laughs and laughs, laughing harder at his frown.

"I'm glad you find yourself hilarious," he huffs, catching her with his arm as she topples out of her chair. "You need to slow down."

"You need to catch up! Gendry." She's on her feet, but just barely, all small hands tight on his arm. "You're strong," she says, and she's looking at him in that strange way he noticed again, like she's evaluating him for something, like he didn't want to think about that tavern wench looking at him the same way.

"Why are you drinking?" He choices instead, a safer topic. He shakes his head to the tavernkeep she gestures over, and the meek man must think better of serving them.

"Because," she challenges elusively. He arched a brow at her, resigning to ask her again later when dreams were out of her head. "Why _aren't_ you drinking?"

"One of us needs to be clear-headed just in case."

"In case of what? A fight?" She sputters out her ale in hysterics, foam dribbling down her chin. "You don't think I could still protect myself?"

"I didn't say that," because any doubts he did entertain are negated. She could likely still shoot an arrow straight, even if she couldn't walk straight.

"I could beat _you_ in another fight," she grins, reaching for his half-full tankard.

And he's too stupid to stop the words, "I think you yielded to me, Arya," as he leans onto the table and crosses his arms, watching another warm smile curl her mouth.

"But you did lose," she points out, and he can see the grey of her eyes burning hazy.

"I'm not sure you've got that right."

"Maybe," she agrees, but just because the ale is muddling her thoughts. She feels the warmth in her stomach, and this is nice, isn't it? It is, even if he's still absently frowning at nothing. "So what's bothering you?"

He mumbles that it's nothing, but she knows he's always more and more quiet when he's upset. She knows. "Just thinking," he tells her, and he has that pained expression that's gotten more serious since he became a man grown, and he hasn't seemed to really smile since he woke.

"About what?" His-her last mug was nearly empty; she slammed it gently on the table as she studied him.

"It's not important."

"Is, too."

"Arya," he sighs. "What are we doin' here?"

"Do you know what I think?"

"Arya," he repeats. He runs his hand through his hair, and it doesn't make sense, even if it's Arya, that a highborn lady sit in a grimy tavern drinking ale with a grimier blacksmith when she ought to be sitting in a fancy parlor drinking tea with powdered lords.

"You should forge me a new sword." She grins again, and it's softer, and she's lost all her laughter, watching him. "Your face," she mumbles, and he doesn't stop her when she reaches out to his face, her deft fingers brushing just to the side of his left eye. "Laughlines."

"No," he merely says, but the corner of his mouth quirks up in a smile. She has them, too, faint lines crinkling the corners of her eyes in stress and worry and hardship. "You want a new sword, then?"

"One that fits me now," she nods, drawing back. Until the nodding hurt her head, and she didn't seem to like ale anymore. "It's brilliant."

He extends his arm to catch her when it looks like she's going to topple out of her chair again. But she doesn't; his hand coming to the side of his face instead. "What is?" He sounds distracted, but that bloke in the corner of the room is staring at her.

"Your blacksmithing."

He snorts in disbelief that isn't humility, his mouth dry where it needs alcohol, and she punches his shoulder. It's all she can do, she doesn't know how to tell him she thinks his talent is brilliant and something to be proud of. How he can manipulate metal and armor and fire to bend and sing and craft, how _strong_ and _powerful_ that makes him.

How it's so much more than any boring lord can do. "It is," she insists, because it means something, and it's _useful_ , and she hates the way his shoulders are sagging. "You can do things others can't, make things --"

"But not by choice," he interrupts, reaching for the nearly empty flagon. It wasn't his choice to be sold to Mott and the trade.

"Yes." She frowns at him, snatching the drink back. "Your choice to smith here, right? And stay here."

She looks cross, and "Yes," he says, grunting singularly in annoyance. She's laughing, though, cackling, and he's laughing with her before he can help it. "Yes. Now no more to drink, it's not even noon."

She waves him off nonchalantly, and he waves the tavernkeep over. "Another," they tell him. And he's smiling, and how can he not believe her?


	7. The Greatest Bastard

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A confounded branch, a poisonous and spiteful stone, neither knew, but she was stumbling then falling, his arm around her waist before her foot caught her wrong, and her ankle was already starting to swell twice its usual size, a stupid hurt the only malleable wrong in a short lifetime of irony.

There was a brightness tinging in her grey eyes, a spark of the flames from the fire just in front of them enchanting her irises, and she didn't want to think about it, didn't want to consider why the Brotherhood's fire god was so easy for him to accept, because he knew how the flames licked and moved, how he could bend them to his will as he tamed shrapnel to steel to sword to her, how it was so easy and accustomed and natural.

He had told her he thought the faces on the godswood trees were strange, frightening, _judging_ , and she knew the last only hit him because it was so _presumptuous_ a bastard blacksmith call a noble lady by her first name, as he he was told.

As she laughed and thought how he was familiar enough to call Sansa by her name in conversations with Arya but always remained so quick to _your grace_ the older sister in public formality and eloquent decency.

It made her smile, a quick exhale of warm air in the muggy heat of the forge, and it's sweltering hot, burning, blazing in juxtaposition to the coldness clouding their breaths in tandem to the smoke billowing away, and they have seven platters of food, an entire barrel of water, an old, scratchy tablecloth, and a cat, because they haven't learned Gendry's allergic. But she laughed, and he shot her a look like she was delirious, wiped his dirty hands on his leather apron, and reached for the flagon of water she brought him when she wondered in.

It was starting to be a habit, the absent movement of her feet paving a soon well-worn path to the smithy, but the heat of his work had warmed the water, and a drop of sweat beaded down his bicep as he drank. His scarred knuckles were always white in his deathgrip on the smithing tools, and she wonders how strong he really is, why his right index finger is scarred that way.

He was cutting onions (she asked, of course she asked), and he told her later when he mentioned how behind he was in his work to conveniently miss another feast that evening.

And it was a different habit, how much of a fixture her near constant presence in his smithy was, that the weeks of watching him work like the months of watching him work had seasoned her, them, keening her on precisely when to hand him which tool he needed, when to offer him a rag, how close to watch when he was doing anything besides hammering, when to back away to give him space, when a tension would settle between his shoulderblades as he'd glance to her -- she knew, she always knew -- when she wasn't watching him.

He had told her soon, very soon for the blade he was crafting her, but he hadn't told her how Rickon, no, _m'lord_ , had offered to help him learn letters in exchange for help with steel and footwork. Neither lad was a quick study, she knew that much, but _silent as a shadow_ , she managed to sneak into the library where book upon book was stacked before a frustrated Gendry and an eager-looking Rickon.

Dust curdled off the stale pages as he sighed, and he was silent as Maester told him books were weapons, but he groaned like he was dying, and the prideful thinking of a smithing mind figured the real weapons he crafted to be far more deadly. Books might not have aged, but neither did a good metal, and she was suddenly livid, angry at her brother for his offer to help when all Gendry did was try to think, fail to think, confusion and dread furrowing his brows like forgotten pages were wrinkled, like steel would never tarnish when it was trusted so, like ages of not knowing how to do something seemed impossible to remedy since bladework did mean more than parchment, right?

But _a_ , Rickon learned, Gendry knew that letter, even if he glared at each page before him and raised his voice in defense when he couldn't answer their questions. He was threatened, and she scoffed at him the one time he bent the knee to Rickon when he ran into the forge. He had told her he should be doing the same to her, a courtesy, and he called her _m'lady_ at the end as if that didn't make him any more stupid.

And it had felt like a short spring, if it ever was, but where blossoms fell from trees and perfumed the air in its sweet ichor, snow started to fall again, and she saw his face and the wonder belying the amazement that was almost childish in his enthrallment. She remembered the first time he saw snow, just a bastard boy from Flea Bottom, nicking a thin blanket from the large pile in a wagon just for her because she (he) was just a tiny thing and could freeze to death if he wasn't too careful, but how could snow be so harmful when it was so light and puffy and free as it fell?

He was five and ten then and staring to the heavens in wonder like he _really_ believed, like he looked now, and that's what she wanted to remember instead of his trembling fingers and his shuddering breaths and how his always-warm body felt so cold and cold and she was and the snow could kill them if the goldcloaks didn't.

But they never did, and a week later she found herself telling him (as she stole a potato wedge off his plate) that she always wanted to be a kingsguard, a queensguard now, maybe, and how maybe Jon would let her if she asked.

He wasn't eating any more of them potatoes, _don't like them_ , he said, just because she did, and she could do it, he knew, like she had told him she would be a warrior princess like Nymeria or a fierce knight like Brienne of Tarth.

And he remembered meeting her, the fight that cost her part of her face, and Arya sat in wonder as he spoke, embellishing the tale of clashing steel and pounding hooves and how fearsome Lady Brienne seemed in combat. How fearful she looked when she stared at him when it seemed ghosts were rising with the dead like Renly like skin like a shadow.

And they spoke of winter, too, and she smiled and felt her chest sieze when he told her of the dark nights that felt alive when nothing else seemed to be, how some nights he could hear the wolves howling and calling to the cloudy moon of other wolves, how he remembered the girl who told him she believed she was one.

 _Stupid_ , but she knew he knew she enjoyed that, loved that, and he grinned, half his mouth curving up, full-tilt, lighting up his face like Dornish sun and sand, and maybe they'd go there sometime; all of Westeros was fucked everywhere but here, but Dornish wine, right?

And the silks, and he tugged on the silk sleeve of her russet gown to adhere his cleverness like he was, and she shoved him hard before he could think lowborn fingers weren't meant to touch expensive silks or highborn skin. And how it became habit, she didn't know, but he was always skimming his fingers over each injury she sustained when she was younger: blisters, scrapes. A protective inspection surviving 'till they were older: her sore knuckles when she punched his chain jerkin when he walked in like wildfire spread, slow but sure -- and maybe he was comforted when dragons set their world to fire, she didn't know, but ash and brimstone and warm smoke held such solace to him -- but when he had walked in, slow but sure and asking to be punched, and now, because she fell, and seven hells, how does she fall? Not watching her steps and watching him instead, how does she fall?

A confounded branch, a poisonous and spiteful stone, neither knew, but she was stumbling then falling, his arm around her waist before her foot caught her wrong, and her ankle was already starting to swell twice its usual size, a stupid hurt the only malleable wrong in a short lifetime of irony.

The godswooded sapped tears wept for her hissed groan of protest when he carried her to the Maester, because it was nothing, she was fine, alright, always so alright, wondering why he seemed so miffed with her as he stared forward, ignoring a jeer from the stableboy, ignoring how she couldn't ignore her palm was over his heart, how warm it was.

Sansa was screeching, brimming with tears, and she told her not to fuss, thanked her for the pillows, and pretended to frown at her baby brother when he laughed at her clumsiness. A joke, a great joke, but the herbs given to her made her sleepy, and she couldn't finish the soup Sansa fed her, licking her lips and yawning before she was dreaming, a precaution to the pain she didn't mind, the fault of the sleeping head of unruly dark hair huddled into the nearby chair. Of course she blamed him, of course he made her stay enjoyable.

"I can walk," she told Jon when Gendry had left, when Sansa disappeared after covering Arya with two more quilts.

"You will rest," and she rolled her eyes at how commanding he sounded, how domineering, how so much like Father she felt it behind her eyelids.

"Stupid shouldn't have brought me here," she mumbled. "I'm fine."

She always was, too, the sort Jon was, so he laughed. "Tomorrow."

"I'll die of boredom."

"Sansa can come read to you." She glowered at him, so fierce with her shadowed eyes and her unwashed hair and hilltop of pillows cushioning her. "Gendry said he would return after he ate this morning," he told her then, leaning his elbows onto his knees. "He comes here often."

"Lots of people do," she supplied, nonplussed. Gendry just made it less boring, more bearable, always ready to listen to whichever stupid thought she had, because what else could she do?

"You visit the smithy a lot," he observed, and oh, she knew that look, registered the unspoken question, knew there was something more she was expected to say than _I do_.

But she did. She was comfortable there. He was there.

And now she realizes it's always there she's off to, preferring his company during meals, ranting at him when Sansa unnerved her. Laughing with him at nothing, at the day, at his distraction the one time she did manage to sneak up on him, poking his bare side and nearly causing him to drop that heavy hammer on his foot. Or worse -- her foot, to hear him tell it, and she couldn't help but smile at the japes he made at her expense, anything for him to get a rise out of her when she felt so aloof drinking that herbal pain remedy now.

So aloof and not herself that something in her vision had made his eyes bluer, and he had been staring at her in that way, and she could count his freckles, could sketch the shape of his mouth from memory if she had to, if she wanted to, how it slowly curved up as he watched her, plaintive and freezing, because he opened the window to let in the chilly air because she was so warm under all these layers, and "Arya," he had said her name, shaking his head to himself, the dark room, his voice raspy and catching the howling of the wind through the crack in the window, "Arya."

Because he _was_ presumptuous enough to call her by name like he always did, and she liked it when he wasn't thinking social class or highborn or baseborn or bastard or anything but friend; that's who he always was first and before everything, but remembering his palms at her thighs the first and last time they sparred since, how blue his eyes were the nights he saw something in the heavens again when the clouds didn't conceal the stars, how it changed, somehow, something, how it was always seeming to be him in anything she needed or wanted, how her heart was seizing again when she found the helm crafted as a direwolf instead of a bull, how that meant more than words she couldn't voice, because it all meant something, didn't it? Something more than she thought.

Raising identical grey eyes to his, she finally said, "It's strange." And it was strange, but the details fuzzy in her mind didn't have to be sorted through yet, not when she was drowsy and her head felt so light and her ankle throbbed. But she was smiling again, tired but luminous, swallowing an indecent yawn. "All the best boys are bastards, aren't they?"

He brought her breakfast.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Her feelings are recognized! Thank the Seven, and thank you loves. xoxo good things to come next chapter!


	8. Am I the One Your Truth's Been Waiting For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jon frowned. "What do you need?"
> 
> "Who are you going to marry?"
> 
> Gendry looked even more uncomfortable than he had moments ago, she saw, and impassive big brother Jon looked confused.
> 
> "..What?"
> 
> "For alliances or lands or something?"
> 
> "Arya."
> 
> "Sansa."
> 
> "Jon, she asked about Willas, and as Lord of Winterfell --"

She's so indignified just laying there, but when has she ever cared?

"You could help me escape."

He scoots his chair just a smidgen closer to her bedside, handing her the next sheet of parchment atop the nightstand. "I could," he agrees, always one to humor her. Indulge her, because there's nothing he could really ever deny Arya.

But he isn't being helpful enough, and she rolls her eyes. "But you won't."

"..Can you even walk?"

"Better than you could run," she mutters.

Sansa smiles to herself from across the room, and Arya has nearly forgotten her sister sat there with needlework in hand. "You can't escape if I'm here to ensure you don't move about," she points out.

She meets her gaze for just a moment before starting to laugh. She could most definitely escape Sansa without a problem; all it took was a diversion! As easy as lemoncakes, though.. while an injured ankle wasn't the worst injury she'd had, it'd been a long while since she had suffered a beaten body or raw feet or cuts slicing over her body. But it still hurt.

"You're staying here," Gendry said cheerfully, smiling all bright teeth and dimples and obvious pride with himself. "Doing whatever that is."

She held up the papers when he nodded to them, feeling another swell of pride settle in her belly as she skimmed over the numbers. To occupy some of her time, Jon had asked her to look over various financial matters, smiling as he recalled how good she always was with numbers and saying how she could be his financial advisor 'till she was able enough to be a Queensguard.

He was jesting, but pfft, she knew he didn't know he was serious yet.

"Did you know you're making us quite a lot of silver?"

He knew she was taking care of important matters he couldn't begin to understand; she excitedly told him what work Jon had offered her, but he couldn't help teasing her when the jape came easy to his mind instead of the usual negativity. "You mean in steel or coin?"

She watches him pick up a book without bothering to pretend to read it, flipping through the pages in search of pictures instead. And when he glanced back up to her with another warm grin that touched his eyes, her stomach felt it, the traitor. She winced, because when did a stupid smile lurch her lungs to her belly, and why did the scruffy unkemptness of his growing beard make him just a bit more handsome than she likely never appreciated? No. "Both," she said weakly.

"What was that face? Pain?" His smile was lost to a frown as he searched her face, his dark brows arching as Sansa's chair squeaked.

"What do you need?" she asked sweetly, coming to the foot of the bed and lightly peeling the blankets from her elevated foot. "It's still enlarged."

"The Maester said it would be for a while," he offered, standing up so he could inspect her foot beside Sansa.

"I'm fine," Arya protested, trying to kick her foot back under the coverlet. But ouch. No one listened to her.

"No," Sansa said, the epitome of determination and no-nonsense. "You're not. We can try compression?" She looked up to Gendry for confirmation, something that made Arya strangely.. happy. To see, even if he blanched like he wasn't sure if Lady Sansa was really asking him his opinion.

"Might help, your grace," he offered meekly, rubbing at the back of his neck.

She didn't tell him that he addressed her constantly like she was the queen. "I'll be back." She smiled politely at him, the timid curl of her mouth she knew was all manners and uncertainty still, before looking back to her. "Stay here," and she was gone, and Arya stared wistfully as the door.

"We can escape now," she tried after a moment, testing a glance to him when he reclaimed his seat.

"No."

"Why not?"

"You can't move."

"I can crawl."

"Down the stairs?"

"..Please?"

He looked to her, eyes bluer where the lamplight caught his pupils, and she knew he had to say yes, because there's nothing he could ever really deny Arya.

"No."

She groaned and buried the side of her face in her pillows, muttering something about a stubborn bull and how staying this still for this long would kill her.

\- -- - -- -

Sansa returned with Maester Lyden, and when he gave Gendry a pointed, curious look, he was up and out, thinking it best to wait outside the room while the Maester took over ankle care.

But Jon's somewhere down the corridor, she can hear his voice carrying until it's just in front of the closing door behind Gendry, and her attention is taken by the Maester as the click of the wooden latch leaves her alone with him and Sansa.

"It's still causing her pain," her sister betrays, and she doesn't tell her that it's a lie. Partially.

He mumbles something about mobility, or something, something; she's taken a bad habit of only pretending to listen when there are better things claiming her attention -- like Sansa and her strangely convenient distractions.

"Lord Tyrell is visiting soon."

"Willas?" Sansa gives her a look, but the pink tint flushing her cheeks is still a diversion from the stinging of her ankle pried left and right. "Are you going to marry him? And a bit tighter?" she asked to Lyden, only vaguely aware of her ankle being bound.

She didn't have the grace to look surprised, neither did, but what Maester hadn't heard the gossip of two women before? "He hasn't asked."

"..But if he did?" Another pillow was propped beneath her foot, and the Mother should be proud of her patience for thanking the kind old man instead of glowering at him. Another pillow had to mean more bedrest, but "Thank you," she grit out as civilly as she could.

Sansa snorted, and Arya ignored the unladylike sound to grumble into her pillows. "We _have_ talked about it," she said, pushing a lock of auburn behind her ear.

"..You and Willas?" Arya asked, incredulous.

"Thank you for your time, Maester Lyden."

"Of course, m'lady Sansa," he smiled, old and clear and starting to worry since Arya pushed herself up from the bed.

"Is that why he's coming here? You're actually going to wed? Again?" It did make sense, if they were in love, she knew, but Sansa suffering through all of that again? Men were idiots! And cruel in Sansa's case, though Willas was different like Gendry was.

"Arya," her sister sighed, rising to her feet and ushering the wincing man out the door. He was no stranger to the Ladies of Winterfell's quarrels, and Sansa was pinching the bridge of her nose. "Jon and I have spoken about it as well. You haven't forgotten marrying is uncommon," she said, almost sounding as snippet as she did when she was younger.

"Jon?" she repeated, half in shock, mostly in shock. She hadn't thought he'd try to organize arranged marriages, honestly, after everything. But a sudden thought riveted her, and she could hear him and Gendry still talking where the door was left ajar. "Jon!"

Sansa made a sighing noise at her loud tone, and he poked his head in. "Arya?" Ghost trotted into the room, pushing open the rest of the door and jumping up onto her bed like the lazy mass of cuddly white fur he was, and Jon frowned. "What do you need?"

"Who are you going to marry?"

Gendry looked even more uncomfortable than he had moments ago, she saw, and impassive big brother Jon looked confused. "..What?"

"For alliances or lands or something?"

"Arya."

"Sansa."

"Jon, she asked about Willas, and as Lord of Winterfell --"

"I'm not," he began, retaking his stern voice, "demanding any of you marry someone you wouldn't want to." Very pointedly, he was looking at Arya.

And then it felt like they were really just a brother and sisters, not a Lord Warden and female successors/noble ladies that frightened him when they started bickering. But it also felt like they shouldn't be having this conversation, like Jon should be convincing Robb that the prospect of wedding a respectable woman could have its benefits while Sansa rejoiced at the potential in being wife, mother, and Lady in another hold.

And then somewhere, Father would be kissing Arya's forehead and telling her again how her sons could be knights and Kingsguards and warriors all their own as Mother resigned to brushing out her brunette hair and telling her how marriage was family, duty, honor.

"Doesn't mean it doesn't help," he continued, "when the heir to Highgarden makes our Sansa grin like a fool." He smiled at her lightly, and Arya almost felt guilty that she was surprised Sansa smiled back.

"What about Rickon?"

Jon only stared at her, and it was her sister's turn to laugh. "Ever notice how he talks about Shireen Baratheon?" Of course the infatuation of love could make Sansa smile and laugh so easily, and Jon noticed it, too, and maybe they should give the slow-spoken, cane-bearing Willas Tyrell more thanks for that. The change in her had been slow, but constant, and maybe it did make sense they marry, mayhaps.

Probably.

She flopped back against the pillows dramatically, but another horrifying thought came to mind. "What about me?"

"Someone," Sansa answered easily. She'd retaken her needlepoint in hand.

"Someone?" she repeated, looking to Jon with a ferocity that _knew_ he wasn't a about to tell her she would marry some weak lord.

He instantly held his his hands up in defense, Ghost whining as Arya rubbed his ears. "You know I, or anyone else, can't make you do anything."

She better not have heard Gendry snort. Or sigh.

\- -- - -- -

"Can you read these words?"

She wasn't really asleep, but the will power to open her eyes was significantly lacking. Was that Rickon?

"I," Gendry began. She could practically see his dark brows furrow as he concentrated like they always did, but remembering the smile he had when she'd "taught" him the letter word _I_ made her glad her back was turned to his and Rickon's corner of the room.

"Am?" he said after a moment, a question, testing the sound as he read it. "Gendry!" It was a hushed excitement when he finished, a quiet exhale of the accomplishment that was no small feat, and her brother offered his positive reinforcements along with him.

"You're a quick learner!" he appraised with his cheery laugh. "You've been practicing writing it, right?"

"When I've the time, aye."

"You're here a lot," he stated in that very Rickon and sure and grown up at a mere ten and a couple years way. She'd have laughed, but their voices were starting to muddle as sleep began to shake her.

"I am," Gendry said. His voice sounded lower.

"Is what they're saying true, then?"

"Is.. what?" He sounded confused, but then, she was curious, too. What who said? About what? Rickon must have thought better of answering; a few moments passed before Gendry asked, "Are you going to tell me about Shireen Baratheon, m'lord?"

Humor was in his tone, a familiar teasing she really liked to hear between him and her brother, but _seven fucking hells_ , of course Rickon wanted to tell him about Shireen Baratheon and everything she'd been keeping busy with for the past seven years.

And the three before that for good measure, and had Gendry ever seen Shireen? Rickon described her in vivid detail, appraising her eyes and her skin and her hair and her esteemed beauty and how smart and kind and cheery her laugh sounded and the stories she'd told him of her childhood and her favorite pony and if Gendry didn't regret asking about her since at twelve years old Rickon was a poet --

It must have been hours, but she'd fallen asleep.

\- -- - -- -

"Arya," he tried softly. But she didn't wake, and his hand was hesitant as it gently set to her shoulder. "M'lady, you need to wake."

That shook her, and she groggily swat at his hand. "Don't call me that, Gendry," she grumbled, squeezing her eyes closed.

"There's not even a light in here."

"Go away."

"You slept through dinner and missed supper, Arya." There was a creak, and she opened her eyes to him seated in the same chair as earlier. She blinked a few times to let her eyes adjust to the dim darkness of the room, but he laughed when her stomach growled. "Can I bring you anything?"

"Anything from the kitchens," she sighed. And maybe..

"Alright." He rose again just to pause, looking as if he might say something terribly important, but he ended up walking out without a glance back.

As soon as the door clicked its close, she pushed her covers away and bit back a grimace as her legs swung over the edge of the bed. The first step was always the hardest, but carefully, she was standing on her own, most of her right side's weight pressed on her toes. That didn't hurt, she found, and slowly she stepped her away across the room.

But she opened the door the same time Gendry seemed to reach it, and a quick glance asserted he came back empty-handed. "You didn't even bring me food?" she hissed quietly, focusing on that instead of taking light to her escape.

"I didn't go!" he whisper-shouted back. "You agreed too easily, I thought you might sneak out."

"I was going to wait for you, though."

"And I was going to convince you to go back and rest."

She stifled a laugh, reaching out to the wall to steady herself. "You can try, but I won't listen," she admitted.

He offered her his arm for balance, the chivalrous thing to do, but she'd could see he was thinking, trying to reason with himself or something, something. He'd just have to accompany her in case she fell again, she knew. "..Where are we going, then?"

She hadn't thought of that, but they were walking down the corridor all the same, her stubbornly not leaning on him to support her (she could walk, and his arm had nothing but the average effect on her). "We never made it to the Godswood."

"Where you fell? Try again, but remember they'll come look for you at the Forge."

"Damn your logic." He just smiled, long past deciding against chastising her language. "My quarters."

"Where?"

"Uh." They weren't far, but they had to move up stairs and a separate corridor and that was too far away. "There are stairs soon."

The rest of the way was made in the quiet loudness of the castle, most of its occupants retired for the night, she guessed. She caught sight of the moon through a window, bright and full, and she hoped she'd hear the direwolves howling tonight. "Up these steps and to the left," she told him, wincing as her right foot met the first stair.

"I can help you," he offered in that quiet way he did, but she shrugged him off. "You _can_ ask for help, y'know."

"I can manage." But one of his arms was at her back, the other behind her knees, and she was off her feet before she could protest being set against his chest and easily lifted. "..You don't fight with honor," she grumbled, sullen and grateful in a small way.

"You're too loud," he teased back half-heartedly, striding up the rest of the steps carefully. They were quiet otherwise, and when they reached the top, he turned left, coming to double-sided doors. "Here?"

She nodded, slacking her fist's grip in his jerkin so he could gently set her to her feet. And she swayed for a step, but his hand was back out to steady her, firm at her side as she turned to face him, back against the door. "..Thank you," she said to break the silence, looking up.

The castle was quiet, and he was looking down to her, soft in that way she'd familiarized him with, smiling that quirked lilt of his lips. "I enjoyed today."

"It was interesting, I'm sure."

"In its own way," he agreed.

Strange, the absence of his hand from her waist as he took a proper step back. "..And my family didn't frighten you the entire day," she said.

"They didn't."

"And you --"

"Arya?" he interrupted, stepping forward again, just the slightest bit. His hand was back against her side, more gentle and tentative, and she thought his gaze lowered down from her eyes.

"Yes?" She sounded smaller than she'd liked to, and it must have been the lit dark in the corridor or how he seemed to hunch to be more at her eye level, mesmerizing gaze flickering from her lips to her eyes, how she was too aware that leaning just a breath forward would press her mouth to his and kindle the intensity she felt gazing at her, and she suddenly wanted that. Them.

To kiss him. Gendry.

Not in gratitude or friendship or survival, but something different, sweet like the cakes he brought her for breakfast or rough like she was sure his beard would feel or deep like the blue of his eyes were or cautious because she wasn't sure she knew how to kiss, but a part of her wanted it. The years they'd lost, all empty and aching, and the years they've yet, all of them with him, because he was Gendry, and he was different, and her friend, and loyal, and Winterfell was warmer since he came back, and she never wanted him to leave, and his tongue was wetting his lips as they looked to each other, and maybe he felt it, too, the stirring of something and how it changed.

And with a breath, she was ready to tell him so, to step forward with her lips and take back the breath that caught her throat, but her side was cold again where his hand left it.

"I hope you enjoy the rest of your evening, m'lady," he said lowly, and she thought he was looking at her lips again before he turned away, but maybe not. It was a dark corridor.


	9. Some Make It, Mistake It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She thought she heard him saying something, but she could breathe him in, he was so close, could almost feel the press of his mouth warm against her own as his face drew nearer to hers in a tantalizing slowness, like he was offering her the time to deny him if she wished it, like he was trying to reason with himself until her hands at his shoulders pulled him ever closer to her, and her name was lost to his lips.

They didn't talk about it.

The kiss.

Or rather, she didn't tell him that she was planning to kiss his smooth-looking lips and his ruggedly stubbled face when he was looking at her like she was the center of all he ever wanted ever, mayhaps, but he didn't mention it like they didn't talk about the one time they sparred where she _completely_ triumphed over him, even if only just because he caved to her and her thighs around--

They didn't talk about that either.

Well, maybe she tried to mention it once, to try and segue into asking him precisely what he thought was transpiring between them in that dark corridor outside her room. It had been days since then after all, and she'd barely seen him after then because everyone was preparing for the arrival of Lord Tyrell and his traveling party.

It seemed that when Sansa told her Willas was arriving soon, "soon" meant within the week, not within the next month or, y'know, next thirty-seven years, roughly. Sansa was obviously a poor conversationalist, that's what Arya kept telling Jon anyways, that lacked no subtlety in what she chose to omit from what _should_ be public knowledge, but what else was new? She was a lot like Gendry in that aspect.

Poor social skills, because all she did was ask him if he remembered their spar, and he was sputtering and nearly choking on the water she brought him. "Arya! I am -- I'm a man!" He was half-shouting, moving both his arms like windmills, as if that would emphasize his words. As if his masculinity was relevant.

"..Really?" She had asked him next, making her eyes wider in feigned innocence.

He stilled at once, disheveling his sweat-laden dark hair with a rough hand. "Yes. I'm --" But he stopped what she was sure would have been quite the endearing explanation about how much of a man he was when she started giggling.

They didn't talk about that either.

\- -- - -- -

When the green and golden rose banners were first sighted on the road leading to Winterfell, an excitement swept over the castle as servants hustled and bustled about. Sansa had wanted everything in the rebuilt keep of Winterfell to be perfect: meals, dates, entertainment, rooming arrangements. She'd been busy for all the days prior, though Arya wasn't complaining -- her focus on the castle just meant the sisters weren't bothering each other, and who really protested to that? But Sansa was a fright. Everything was just as perfect as she wanted it, from the dining plans to the soft blue of her gown she'd chosen specifically for today to brighten the Tully blue in her eyes, and in a fleeting moment of kindness, Arya worked her nimble fingers to fashion the sheens of red hair in the intricate Southron braids she remembered Sansa used to love.

Of course, the moment of sisterly affection was all but ruined when Sansa just had to ask if Arya was really thinking of wearing _that_ outfit of dirty boots and woolen trousers to greet the noble precession in, but could she really refuse something that would tarnish her sister's happiness on a day she had been waiting forever for? When Willas could make her preen so? No. Little else could give her and Jon a glimpse of the silly girl their sister once was with giddy smiles and rosy cheeks, so it'd all prove worth it.

And maybe life would be gravely different now.

Sansa of House Stark and Tully, Queen to King Joffrey of House Baratheon and Lannister, First of His Name, Protector of the Realm.

She might have been a mother by now, as devout and regal and bitter as the Queen Regent, Cersei.

In another world, maybe she and Joffrey could have been happy. As in love as Sansa once believed they were. Maybe she would have freed herself from her cage, the Little Bird. A dog could have draped black and yellow across her shoulders as she sang to him, a sweet humming that would never cease to amaze any when the Hound was tamed, when their world in King's Landing turned to ash and fire.

Perhaps he could have taken her to Winterfell, to Mother and Robb and Bran and Rickon. Maybe if they found Arya traveling on the Kingsroad, they could have brought her home, too.

Maybe she'd have married a Frey, maybe she might have danced with Jon on her wedding day, since Robb of House Stark, the King in the North, had legitimized him, and maybe he would have married Roslin Frey instead.

Or maybe she'd have danced with her Father. Perhaps Jaime Lannister had claimed the Iron Throne for himself, and Robert Baratheon would be wed to her Aunt Lyanna, and they'd offer them well wishes with the rest, just the Lord and Lady of Storm's End, not the King that ordered her Father serve him.

Perhaps just Aemon Targaryen might have been King. Jon told them stories of the kind old Maester of the Night's Watch, who like so many was meant for more.

Maybe everything might have been different, then. That would have been lovely.

Maybe she might have married Willas in any of those worlds, too, like the songs where souls and their hearts always found each other.

And here they were, after everything. "You look beautiful," Jon told Sansa as they waited in the grey cold for the carriage to complete its stop. Quiet and honest, he said it, like Eddard used to tell his eldest daughter before other worthy enough occasions.

She glanced up from straightening the pleats and folds of her skirts, eyeing him warily for just a moment -- until she smiled, and anxiousness proved to be just as lovely on her as happiness and grief and love had ever been. "Thank you," she whispered back, exhaling a slow, calm breath. "..But _please_ stand up straight, Arya."

In instinct, her grey eyes were looking to the smoke billowing black from the smithy's chimney, and she desperately wanted to be there without all the pomp of this ceremony and the pain of the laces of her dress slowly suffocating her. But then Sansa was sucking in a deep breath and stepping forward, eager and waiting and clapping her hands together like it was all she could do to not jump up and down. She looked so gleeful, so childlike in her amounting excitement, that she wished Gendry were there with her to see it, too, to see the eldest Lady of Winterfell account herself so uncomely in her genuinity. It would make anyone smile.

And it did in the look she saw echoing from across the courtyard when Willas Tyrell stepped out of his carriage with his breath freezing in clouds before him, his eyes searching, searching, settling on Sansa with such a joy and a sweetness, they were hearts and wings and the inherent affection no one could begin to doubt. Not with how they looked to each other.

Maybe it was just  _'tis a good match, truly,_ like Sansa had said, or all those written love letters they traded.

His right leg seemed unsteady on his first step out of the carriage, but his cane supported his weight as he neared, wind tousling his dark brown curls, life seemingly coursing through him, bright and resilient. "Good eve!" he cheerily called as he neared, his party following in step behind him.

"My Lord," Jon greeted warmly, striding forward a step, "may your winters be short and your summers bountiful."

Lord Tyrell bowed his head when Jon did. A gust of chilled wind rattled the gates of Winterfell, waving the Stark and Tyrell banners and causing him to shiver, though his laugh was as warm as his golden-brown eyes. "I would kneel," he began, "if but my leg allowed it." And whether his cheeks were red from the nipping cold or his embarrassment, Arya didn't know, but he was an easy man to like all the same.

He greeted the rest of the family with the guards he recognized, and she remembered meeting him once very briefly, thinking him quite the serious, stern man until he whacked his younger brother Garlan with his cane; gentle, albeit laughing. She decided he was a good man then, already seeming like a brother to Jon.

There were various laughs and smiles and pleasantries and formalities she wasn't paying as much attention to as she ought to have been -- Rickon elbowed her subtlely in return when it was her turn to curtsey, but Lord Tyrell wasn't paying much mind to anyone else outside of his courtesy, anyways. Just his lady love.

"My Lady Sansa," he murmured, brushing his lips against the back of her hand when he raised it to his mouth. "My dear."

"Lord Willas," she whispered, looking alit with delight and affection. Her cheeks were blushing prettily, and oh, gods. "I'm so happy you've made it to us in good health. And in good time."

"I couldn't stand to be parted from you for too long," he stressed in an over-exaggerated tone, his words a kiss to her hand all their own. "It's bad for one's soul, my dear."

\- -- - -- -

"I'm happy you don't talk like they do," she told Gendry the next day.

While she was more than relieved to see her sister so happy for so long, she and Willas were just rather.. formal. In how they seemed to affront each other. But casually formal. But then she'd only ever seen them in public when they talked, and she'd heard enough lectures from Sansa to know what was appropriate and what wasn't.

Sitting cross-legged on the smithy floor -- likely not appropriate when the smith was just wearing a skimpy leather apron instead of a tunic over his torso, but ah, well.

"..Like a highborn?" he asked her, terse and squared shoulders as he chugged a swallow of water.

And she could see the furrowing frown starting to crease his brows, and the weight at her chest suddenly felt like it'd be crushing if he didn't understand her. "No," she said, just to stop and frown at herself. Because yes. That was it, but it wasn't.

"Yes?" He looked amused, though, just the strange sort, quizzical looking and tearing at their loaf of bread.

"Yes," she admitted, reaching for the larger half of bread when he offered it. "But no."

"Makes sense," he mumbled with a solemn nod that told her she made all the sense in the world.

She felt the volatile need to punch his shoulder and his stupidity. "What I _mean_ ," she explained, "is that I like talking to you as.. you. Just you. And you talking to me as me, not with forced smalltalk and stupid, formal topics belonging in the Sept or the court. Alright?" She exhaled testily through her nose, looking over and up to him to study the set of his jaw for any familiar traces of anger, any hardness around his eyes hinting at doubt, any anything for anything she didn't say like she wanted to, because her words did make her happy, and he.. he needed to know that, too. It mattered.

"Alright," he said slowly, like he was testing the word and the meanings that came with it.

Just Arya and Gendry, not any titles or _should's_ and _should not's_ that might have been supposed to cast a barrier between them.

"Alright," he repeated, more strongly, clear and strong like the once ringing steel on the anvil. He elbowed her once before meeting her gaze, his Flea Bottom drawl lilting into his rugged grin. "I like it, too."

\- -- - -- -

"Very impressive."

"I am."

"Arya." Sansa sighed again, but Willas just laughed.

"That you are, Lady Arya. You're the one keeping record of all financial sums, sales, expenses, profits?" He looked to her over the rims of his golden spectacles -- designed purely for the benefit of all the paperwork he was designated to keeping, even on leisurely trips. Sod. They'd been sitting here for hours and hours. For most of the three days yet of his visit.

"Mmhmm," she mumbled, trying to sort the figures for the seventh time in her head. "Jo-- Lord Stark," she crinkled her nose, "gave me the opportunity to."

Willas only kept smiling, and the wrinkles faintly lying against his eyes might have meant he smiled often. "Jon, then," he said, lapsing in propriety to familiarize himself with his Lord Host's name.

Eventually, Rickon had come to sit with them for a couple hours as they worked, his guise of studying various tomes fading as he interrogated the Lord Tyrell of Highgarden about the business of lording a castle. Because he was just _so_ much more fun to learn from than Jon.

Willas made a point to regale the little lord with autumn hair and a sparring sword every tale from his own childhood he could remember, from his hounds to his horses to his hawks and the one evening he spent up in a tree because he'd gotten stuck after climbing. All of them had been breathless in their laughter when he told them how Garlan tried to mock owl hoots in time with their mother's snoring so she'd be none the wiser when the time came to rescue himself in the midst of the night, though all his siblings had accomplished was to free Willas at the expense of Loras's arms. He broke his left because of that _confounded_ tree.

"Language, ser!" Sansa had chided, hands held to her sides to contain another fit of her laughter.

"That's the Lord of Highgarden to you, She-Warden!"

"Not even a Lady?" She pretended to look offended, sputtering her giggles into a handkerchief.

"My Lady to-be of Highgarden," he had rebutted with, laughing first at Rickon's grimace then Sansa's spastic giggles.

And Arya had never really seen Sansa laugh so.. like that. Or just be _stupid_ with someone else like she was with Willas. And they weren't pompously formal and overbearingly rigid with manners all the time, a painful pair of dancing slippers that left blisters at the expense of looking pretty. They were just barefoot and happy and liberated, blushing at their boldness in their jests like young lovers all over again.

\- -- - -- -

"Yes," she was saying. "Yes," and it sounded like she was crying the tears that came from too much happiness, her arms flinging around the stumbling man's neck. "I do. I will!" She never wanted to marry again, she once thought, but oh, seasons do change, oh, hearts don't always need guards and protection when it's in a good man's safekeeping.

"Oh," and he might have been crying, too. "Oh, Sansa, my love," but their tears turned to unabashed laughter, and he was reaching for Lady Sansa's face with tender hands and a loving expression, catching her stray tears with his fingertips.

Until they jumped when the snap of a twig startled them, both turning to stare at the offender that chose now to take a stroll through the Godswood and interrupt their romantic moment.

"Pardons, I'm --" He wasn't looking at them. Gendry wasn't. Gods damn it. "Just --" he stuttered uncomfortably, lost between bowing or kneeling or fleeing or not. "May the gods bless you!" he shouted, hurrying down the rest of the path.

\- -- - -- -

"Knock," Willas had called, knocking with his free hand on the open study door all four of them occupied earlier. He smiled when Arya glanced up from a desk, looking half-dead and drowned in all the papers swarming the surface. "Still hard at work, I see?"

"I am," she nodded shortly, remembering how her sister would want her to keep her manners. "Did you and Sansa enjoy your walk?"

A faint tinge of red colored his face, and she really hoped Sansa would look the same when she asked her about their outing. She would like that. "..Yes. Yes, Lady Arya." His ever-present smile returned, and he almost looked as if he'd tell her something before deciding against it. "Lady Sansa's bringing up tea and cakes for us," he explained. "And."

She set down the sheet of parchment she was reading through, staring at him as he stepped closer conspirationally. His cane gently tapped on the floor as he moved. "..And?"

"Lady Arya," he began. "May I --" He paused, and gods, Willas was strange. "A serving girl stopped me as I made my way here."

Oh. She hadn't taken Lord Tyrell as someone to be bothered when confronted by the smallfolk. "Well," she frowned. "If you would rather none of the servants speak to you..?"

"Oh, no, no, milady, it wasn't that," he sighed, scruffing his right hand against his beard. "She told me about this young blacksmith Winterfell recently acquired and how he was searching for you on the grounds."

"Has he been?" She felt her lips curl upwards to a smile despite herself, but he was still awkwardly frowning.

"I believe the serving girl described him as a, uhm." His frown deepened. "The _maiden's dream_ of a blacksmith, she called him," he finished, clearing his throat. 

..Oh. Oh. Well, maybe he seemed to be, if one rather fancied that sort of thing. The physique, surely, sculpted and muscled and sturdy and thick. And the hair, too, rather soft looking and ebon, and quite the nice addition to the blue in eyes. Bright and soft and deep and -- "No, he isn't," she said, too late and too red to really be believed.

"Of course," Lord Tyrell noted, leaning his cane against his legs absently.

He was looking around the room, patient, kind, unobtrusive. Waiting. Not like he knew anything, but like he _knew_. And she heard herself telling her future brother all of it, everything to his quiet listening about how she and the stupid blacksmith first met -- without the details of violence and horror he'd likely frown disapprovingly at -- and how they came to be found by the Brotherhood Without Banners -- without the details of violence and horror and torture and murder he'd likely frown disapprovingly at.

The stories of Gendry at the forge, the kind things he had done for her, like watch over her when she fell sick or tell her childish stories to pass the time or spend afternoons searching for the berries he knew she liked, how he didn't treat her like she was a silly child or even a lady when he learned her identity. The few comforting words he offered her as solace to keep her faith in returning to Winterfell. How she had been so angry when he stayed with the Brotherhood, but how relieved a part of her felt when he came back to Winterfell and joined them, stayed in the Stark's service and remained as true to her as he ever had been. Her friend.

She didn't tell him about how he started to look at her like she was something special, though, nor how she used to dread the prospect of marrying anyone and perhaps still did, but spending her life with someone -- that'd be different. But maybe she didn't have to tell Willas that as he listened, patient and attentive and asking her questions when appropriate. Something in his trustworthy demeanor still had her opening up to him, unveiling the thoughts she likely would never tell Sansa normally, but the words helped her make sense of the bull, so she kept talking, words pouring out in breaths.

About how skilled of a blacksmith he truly was, how wasted he was mending horseshoes or door hinges, how surprisingly gentle he could be when handling swordwork instead of making them. How he thought snow was some type of magic the first time -- Willas laughed, and she with him -- and how he'd stayed at the Crossroads caring for orphans, much like Willas told her Margaery and Garlan would. How Jon and the other men respected him, how he kept to his oaths like a true knight, how maybe..

"He sounds a good man," he told her when she'd finished, nearly breathless from how much she spoke without really meaning to. But her heart felt lighter for it, and she was grinning at nothing.

"He is."

"It's poor manners to keep anyone waiting for too long," he said, a smidgen awkward again, beaming in a gentle-hearted way as he gestured Arya take her leave. But he was a Tyrell, and that house was full of nothing if not blunt, scheming romantics.

\- -- - -- -

And maybe it could have been so different.

"Gendry?"

The forge could have been deserted, maybe, if not for the fire blazing near the corner and the thudding of feet, his feet, she supposed, heard from the other room.

"Gendry!" she shouted again, looking to the various items of his craft prized atop the shelves in the smithy.

Maybe they could be in Essos, and he could better learn to master his blacksmithing trade and forge another Valyrian greatsword for Winterfell.

"I'm here! Here, don't keep sh--" He stopped when he saw her, tying the edge of his sleeve with one hand. He looked as if he had just hastily dressed, his black hair looked darker with water if possible, like he had just been in a bath of water or sweat, and she was relieved she didn't barge into the section of the smithy used as his quarters. But he was smiling at her, full lit again, but not like Dorne, like Braavos, and perhaps in another world, they'd travel across all of it. "Arya."

"Gendry," she said. And oh, practically running to the forge in her haste so she'd muddied dress hem and arrived with wind-bitten red cheeks and a disheveled mess of dark wavy hair was all a brilliant plan until she stood there without one. "I was just --"

"Arya," he interrupted like he was always starting to, "I finished the sword you asked me to craft for you."

"Oh," she said, surprising herself again with the relief she heard in her exhale. "The sword."

And maybe in another world, she could have been married to Tommen Baratheon. She might have even learned to love him if she never began to resent him, but all the same, maybe she had still found her way to the House of Black and White. Maybe the kindly man never sent her back to Westeros when some things couldn't be forgotten, and maybe she'd be even more bitter and hardened, fierce in the rage that solely kept her alive and made it so perhaps she had been the unforgiving Lady of Winterfell instead of Sansa.

Maybe she'd have never been able to laugh so easily and freely as she did now, just another price to pay at the cost of the rest of her humanity.

Maybe Gendry would be something ambitious and cruel and dead outside the God's Eye or Lord Commander of the Night's Watch or Ser Gendry, knighted by the Brotherhood Without Banners, and fighting in tourneys where he might have won and crowned her the Queen of Love and Beauty, because maybe that tradition isn't as ridiculous as it once sounded.

But they're here now, all crossed paths and lost chances and something too predestined to be coincidence.

His eyes are bright, twinkling almost in his own excitement or the catches of the flames shining orange hues against his skin. There's a sword's scabbard in his hands, a riveted steel-type guard to the blade he's unsheathing, and oh, oh, it looks almost gold in the firelight though it's silver castle-forged steel and almost exactly like Needle.

It's just larger in her hands, fit for her as an adult and not a child, and as she closes her palm around the hilt and lifts it, it feels like an extension of her own arm. Like a proper blade should. The balance is aligned perfectly in the steel, pressured just enough at the hilt, and when she holds it up in front of her, clasping her other palm around the riveted set of the hilt, it's perfect.

"Gendry," she said quietly, lacking any words, tracing the flat of the sword. She didn't think he'd forgotten she asked him to craft it for her even if she barely remembered asking him to herself, but he _had_ made it for her, and it had been weeks, and it was more than she could have wanted. "I love it," she whispered, gazing down to the sword in reverence she felt behind her eyelids.

"I hope so," he responded, almost sounding sheepish. "It took longer than it ought to, I know, but orders have been piling on, keeping me busy."

"Why?" she asked, and he was usually the one to ask needless questions to prolong any conversation they might have.

"Why is there more work?" His confused frown was shadowed, the right side of his face shining in orange from the fire, and she looked reluctant to release the blade when he extended the scabbard.

"Did you make it," she said instead, sheathing the blade and feeling just how well the two pieces fit and complimented each other. Smooth and utterly perfect, and "Why?" she repeated, staring up to him.

And the forge suddenly felt too warm, her eyes too grey looking at him with an intensity she felt crackling around them. "You asked me to, m'lady," he answered. The corner of his mouth twitched to half a smile when she looked as if she might hit him, even as she turned her gaze down in doubt. "I couldn't dare refuse."

"You could have, though," she said, stubbornly frowning with an uncharacteristic shrug of her shoulders.

Any maybe while her Mother and Robb would still have been slaughtered by the Freys, she might not have left the Brotherhood and been taken by the Hound for ransoming. Mayhaps she would have stayed with the band of outlaws, and where would they be now?

"Arya," he started, wiping the sweat from his brow with a short sigh. "I wanted to craft it. I was more than happy to for you."

"Gendry?" And he had learned to keep his temper in check over the years, it seemed. Or maybe he was just terribly patient with her.

"Yes, Arya?" He sounded exasperated but still soft somehow, his head bowed down to steadily hold her gaze.

"Why did you leave?" she asked, tilting her head up again to see all of his face, all hooded brows and a dark set of his jaw. Her teeth bit at her lower lip, and her grip on the sword he gifted her felt looser and looser.

"Haven't we talked about this? The Brotherhood? Braavos? Crossroads?"

"We -- no," she told him, stiflingly the whining edge from her voice. She wasn't a little girl, she was a commanding woman of Winterfell that would garner the information she wanted. "I don't mean then."

"Then when did I leave when?"

His face was wrought with genuine confusion, and her cheeks felt warmer when her gaze moved from his eyes to his lips. "Outside my door," she murmured, barely audible as her eyes met his again.

"I.. I couldn't have, uh." He shakily cleared his throat, shook himself, made to step back a proper distance. "I couldn't very well have stayed," and she could hear a lilt to his voice trying to make it light instead of tense, because though his temper has gotten slower and he's _trying_ to reign it in, he's not telling her that it wouldn't be proper, that he could be gelded for it, that they weren't in appropriate places to act unaccordingly.

Sweat was clinging to her hair, sticking to her skin beneath the heavy fabrics of her gown, and it was almost as uncomfortable as now, a slow step taken closer to him to bridge the short distance he spaced. "Why do you have a direwolf helm?"

He blinked, his eyes lost to hers in several waning emotions before he raised a hand slowly. "I didn't think you saw it," he said, his voice hushed with the crackling of the fire to the side of them.

She drew a short breath when his fingers set to the curve of her cheekbone, his callused, rough fingertips gentle when he brushed a stray lock of her dark hair behind her ear. And she didn't think she'd ever been touched so tenderly, so lightly, the pressure of his hand against her cheek scarcely felt as if he feared she would crumble beneath him. But perhaps she was, her breath a smidgen shallow before she caught it again. "Why?" she repeated, the same barely audible tone when he drew just a breath closer.

"A direwolf for Winterfell. For the She-Wolf of the North's sigil," he explained, off-hand, like it wasn't important. "It was hope." His thumb brushed against her cheek softly, and without knowing what to do, she brought her hands lightly to his shoulders, holding him before her as she felt him exhale a warm breath.

"For me," she asked, but it wasn't a question, and his stubbled chin dipped in the faintest of nods. "Why didn't you," she started, watching each speckle of blue and azure rim his eyes as he gazed down to her with focus and a look of something else sweetening his face, an intensity and a raw intimacy peering into her, she lost her words and her breath all over again, her cheeks starting to burn as her heart shattered her ribcage.

"Why didn't you?" he repeated, but his sighing soft drawl didn't sound as if he was asking her, just breathing words a breath away from her own. She wanted to finish her question, her statement, but she couldn't have formed the words if she wanted to, a heat starting to spread through her veins and warm her insides when his gaze lowered to her lips when he licked his own.

She thought she heard him saying something, but she could breathe him in he was so close, could almost feel the press of his mouth warm against her own as his face drew nearer to hers in a tantalizing slowness, like he was offering her the time to deny him if she wished it, like he was trying to reason with himself until her hands at his shoulders pulled him ever closer to her, and her name was lost to his lips. Softly, his mouth covered her own, warm and slightly chapped from the chilled North wind, but gentle, and how he kept it chaste, he'll never know.

He didn't even dare move, and she was soft against him, her mouth cautious pressed to his own while everything kindling around them silenced to nothing but them. His hand cupping her cheek moved gently to the nape of her neck, his callused fingers curling through her dark hair slowly as he tilted her chin up, and her mouth slanted over his, still and gentle in her inexperience, but they were kissing, and the fire roared from beside them, and her heart was hammering inside her chest, and maybe he could feel it with how close he was, maybe he'd stay here forever with her, frozen in their sweet, chaste kiss.

And red was burning behind her eyelids and blinding her in the new comfort of lips warm against hers, and they were kissing just a breath of flesh to flesh, but neither heard the approach of footsteps leading inwards from the door of the forge until it was too late and they too lost to their passionate senses.

"Pardons, I'm --" Lord Tyrell was smiling, but when wasn't he? Arya whirled on her toes at once, her cheeks crimson and her breathing far too ragged for such a sweet kiss, and she felt rather than saw Gendry bend the knee from beside her. "Just.." He continued, a light, good-hearted jape of a tease from when he was interrupted earlier. "May the gods bless you."

Arya just stared at him, at a loss of what to do before she saw the discarded sword she was holding next to her feet. "Will there be a problem?" she asked, trying to keep steel in her voice in place of the nerves still jittering her heart as she picked up the blade. She didn't remember dropping it, but details, details, her lips were still burning where she could still feel Gendry. Gendry.

"No, no," Willas said, smiling comfortably despite the moment he interrupted. "I would ask for a moment alone with Ser Gendry, however?" His brown brow arched as he looked from face to face, from Arya's hesitance to Gendry's dread. "..I won't hurt him," he added ridiculously, as if a light kick to his crippled right knee wouldn't completely disable him.

\- -- - -- -

"You can rise, Ser Gendry."

He hadn't spoken or moved since Arya reluctantly took her leave, and Willas just wanted the young lad feeling welcome in his own smithy. When he finally took to a slow stand, the Lord Tyrell continued with a small smile.

"She told me quite a lot about you, Lady Arya did."

"Likely insults, m'lord," but he was smiling just the slightest bit, finally turning his face respectfully up to meet Willas's gaze fully, and _seven raging hells._

It was the face of Renly Baratheon.

And maybe in a different world, a crown of antlers weighed heavy on Gendry Baratheon's dark brow, in his kingdom as the rightful King of Westeros and Lord of Storm's End, First of His Name, Protector of the Realm.

And maybe, just maybe, the world might have met a different reign of fire if the wolf was taken from the stag again, but maybe this history wouldn't repeat itself.


	10. Some Dreams Are Better When They End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The skies were darkening, and night would be falling soon, and he kissed Arya Stark a couple hours ago, and he was a Waters, and he made his peace with that long ago, and all the world was shit and unfair, and the gods could laugh all over again, because maybe all stags turned to the drink in their grief after all.
> 
> But he wouldn't, couldn't; the few times he'd succumbed to wine led to terrible, irrational decisions and dancing.

 "Father," Sansa recited, pushing a brush through her sheens of red hair.

And Eddard Stark would be so happy just now, happier yet as he walked his eldest daughter down the aisle and towards a man he knew she loved.

"Smith," she murmured next, siding her gaze to meet Arya's in the looking glass before them.

And there was something so pointed about that look of ice blue eyes staring at her, the inflected smile in her voice couldn't be coincidence. Had Gendry heard about the engagement formally yet? She would have to tell him.

"Warrior," she sang next, sighing dreamily as she took her brush to Arya's dark waves instead.

Because of his maimed leg, Willas might never fight in a tourney to crown Sansa the Queen of Love and Beauty in his victory, but he also might never fight and die in a war, and the heart tree shouldn't weep for that.

"Mother," she continued.

And there was such a resigned peace in Sansa's voice as she recited the Seven spoken in her marriage vows, that there had to be some divine intervention blessing her. Catelyn Tully watching over her, perhaps. She would have wept when Lord and Lady Tyrell left Winterfell for Highgarden, when her dear daughter waved goodbye. And this time, unlike before, wouldn't be the last.

"Maiden."

Her voice was quieter, mumbling, and Arya wondered if Sansa had been kissed by Willas. Mostly she wondered why her lips hadn't felt the same since Gendry's mouth met them no more than an hour ago, but details, details.

"Stranger," she recited next, smiling apologetically when her brush caught on a tangled knot in russet brown hair.

Strange and stranger, how a year ago her sister had only known Willas Tyrell through correspondence, how she was marrying him now to be his wife in all things. Giggling like loons at Willas's terrible jests, sickeningly sweet to serious in a study while he worked and looked over papers, him absently tapping his good foot on the floorboards, she sitting in a plush chair she'd soon claim as her own.

"Crone."

And maybe Bran saw all of it and a frozen rose in his mind's eye, thorny teeth soft in sweet summers. Maybe he smiled like Sansa was; they had the same Tully shape of the mouth, sweet and soft and bright.

"I am his, and he is mine," she finished, smiling with another wistful sigh that reminded Arya of years ago all over again. The memories came often, granted, but it had proven easier and easier to smile at the past instead of cry for it. Especially when the fleeting moments had Sansa looking so happy. "From this day --"

"Not yet this day," Arya interrupted, unable to conceal her own bright grin while Sansa pinned an unruly curl of her dark hair into place. "But soon. Do you know when?"

Cheeks blushing prettily, she shook her head with a quiet laugh. "We haven't decided yet."

"And you'll be married in the light of the Seven?"

"They're his gods," she answered, "but Mother's gods as well." And she wasn't the silly little girl that did all in her power to make her beloved happy at the expense of her own anymore. "We'll marry in the Godswood, too."

"Before he leaves?"

Sansa only smiled, and she started singing quietly to herself for the first time in ages.

Father. Smith. Warrior. Mother. Maiden. Stranger. Crone.

\- -- - -- -

Smith.

_"Aye, m'lord, I'm the smith."_

_"Yes, m'lord."_

_"Waters."_

_"Yes. A bastard from Flea Bottom."_

_"No, I never knew my father."_

_"She passed when I was younger."_

_"Thank you, m'lord."_

_"..No. Lord Stark doesn't know, m'lord."_

_"..Yes. I'm the smith, m'lord."_

_"I didn't -- I mean, we never.. that was, uh. Uh. What I mean to say is, that was the.. first time."_

And damn.

Willas was looking at him, staring at him, but it wasn't like he was gazing back. The one look he saw told him enough. Recognition, mockery, pity: everything he grew up seeing when his bastard surname was spoken.

But now he needed to think on how uncomfortable it was to profess the intimate details of his nonexistent love life to a stranger, not dwell on the details, details, the warm press of Arya's lips to his own.

And then what it'd feel like to have more of her against him, a kiss that shifted from sweet and cautious and _real,_ to scorching and burning and tongue and teeth and her writhing form beneath his, her moaning breaths hitching with his hands sliding up the sides of her skirts, slipping to the wet --

"First kiss, then?" Lord Tyrell asked.

And Gendry only nodded, his face running red as he wanted to bend the knee in submission again, wanted to raise his chin in stubbornly proud, ashamed defiance, though he knew it never did well to lust after the Daughter of the North and dream about her with thoughts that took a decidedly more passionate tone over the years.

It did even worse to love her.

"Might I speak boldly, Ser Gendry?" And again he only nodded, first flinching, because who asked a bastard's permission? "It won't be the last time, I daresay."

But Willas was smiling, and when Gendry finally chanced a second look to him, it wasn't mockery or pity staring at him. There was something comely and friendly enough about the man, and "I didn't mean to interrupt you earlier, m'lord, when you were with the Lady Sansa in the Godswood," he found himself telling, because that earnest honesty was easier than telling Lord Tyrell and himself that it wouldn't be proper to kiss Arya again. So he'd stop thinking about it.

"You didn't," he told him gently, straight teeth broadening with his grin. "Sansa confessed it made it all the more romantic and personal for us, so I suppose I ought to thank you, which -- she did tell me some about you as well, Ser Gendry."

"About as good a thing as Arya's, yes?"

But Willas was chuckling quietly, light-hearted to Gendry's own slip from propriety, and just like that, the thin layer of awkward tension seemed to abate, warm summer's blood at home in the heat of the forge. "Not many seem to find their way so easily into her good graces, ser."

"No, m'lord, they don't. I've seen as much." He wanted to laugh, but he can't remember if he's ever truly laughed in the presence of lordship before, excluding the Starks, and he's unsure which cards he has to play even as he's chuckling despite himself and rubbing at his jaw. "They seem a good family," he said.

Willas merely nodded, but with something serious, not the frown accustomed to hearing a lowborn's opinion. "They do," he agreed, glancing around the smithy to the various pieces of armor and weaponry lining the shelves. "Actually," he began, his cane clicking against the floorwork again, "you can believe Lady Sansa told me about how terrible she believes Lady Arya to be."

Gendry might have been offended, but he couldn't disagree. Terrible she was surely, but slapping at his chest, calling him stupid, telling him repeatedly how he could forge swords for Robb Stark in Riverrun, scoffing at his idea to become a knight when it was the knights, not the baseborn blacksmiths, that won the heart of highborn ladies and all their perfect flaws, kissing him with an innocent fervor he hadn't thought her capable of.. she was terrible, just the sort that was less terrible with his own. "Stubborn?" he asked instead, biting back the smile pressing at the corners of his mouth.

"And loud," Willas continued. "Trying, rough, improper, unladylike, difficult. Everything Sansa claims she herself isn't." And he laughs to himself, because there was something special about knowing Sansa when she was loud in her own excitement, trying his patience when he was busy rooting through several taxes, improper when she was just a lady and not a highborn lady.

Gendry almost snorted, coughing once as he dipped his chin. "She can be." And she could be.

"You weren't here when Lady Arya returned to Winterfell, correct, ser?"

"M'lord, you only need to address me as Gendry, and no, I was not."

Willas was frowning briefly, thinking he ought to be calling him _m'lord_   instead of his first name if the uncanny likeness meant anything. "Well," he continued. "I wasn't present personally, but I was told of it by Sansa. And when rumors of Lady Arya started to surface, she was concerned that because they were so horrible to each other as children, there'd be no great love between them now. Why wouldn't she run first to her favorite sibling Jon Snow's arms?" Because he was a Stark. In blood and name. "Or Rickon's? He was just a baby when she saw him last, and he's taller than she is now. Surely, she'd hold a greater fondness for either instead of Sansa, when I'm assuming you've heard her tell how my betrothed is just as terrible as she claims her sister to be."

There was something sparkling knowing and mischievous in his hazel eyes, and Gendry could count each passionate _"I hate her!"_ Arya raved about on half a dozen hands. But he could also count the playful swats, the fond eyerolls, the understanding prevailing both of them that made them more friends than enemies.

But then -- weren't all sisters like that? He once tried to consider Arya as a sister when he knew he couldn't consider her more, but as soon as he thought the thought, his mind told him it was a lie, and he went back to trying not to think about what he was thinking about now.

He kissed Arya Stark. A kiss was said to be the sharing of two souls, and he kissed Arya Stark, and it didn't matter that he had been interrogated by her future good-brother, even if he did ask him if he was the blacksmith four times.

"Aye, but I think we know even that is sisterly affection."

Willas pursed his lips slightly. "Sansa," he said simply.

Gendry tried to make sense of just the highborn lady's name, but what did Sansa do? "M'lord?"

"It wasn't Jon's nor Rickon's arms she ran to, neither brother that she'll still swear she loves more than her sister." His smile returned, thirty and four years counting of smiles wrinkling by his eyes, and he was seeing the words like they were a memory. "Arya walked through the gates of Winterfell, bannermen and guards lining the sides just in case the woman claiming to be Arya Stark might be leading an ambush, but they couldn't mistake the Stark grey in her eyes, bright and fiery, gazing at them. They were Jon's eyes, and Sansa was sobbing, and it was her arms Arya ran to. The sisters fell to each other and wept."

Stranger. Maiden.

Gendry was silent, and he could almost see it -- Arya kissing both her sister's cheeks; a proper lady would like that, and Sansa would smooth her sister's mussed brown hair. Eddard Stark would be smiling from above somewhere, with all the other men crowned traitors from the neck up.

"I know they're happy now," he told the Lord in a strange, sudden sense of urgency, like it was his place to personally ensure both well-beings. Or at least one. "Sansa and Arya." Because he was presumptuous enough to call two highborn women by their first names, though Willas didn't seem to mind the least bit, quiet for a few selective moments with a habit look of solemnity composing his features.

"I wish I had gotten to meet her father," he admitted lowly, raising his gaze to Gendry's.

"In respect, Lord Tyrell, I did meet him briefly, and he seemed a good man. The Starks say he was, but like I'm sure all fathers do, he wanted a good man to wed his eldest. Pardons, but I doubt he'd be disappointed." The words were bolder than he intended, but there was an openness to the man he'd likely tell anything to, out of place, line, propriety or not, anything, when he was looking so earnest up at him.

He was silent again, but slowly, he lowered his head to a bow. "And his youngest."

\- -- - -- -

"Lord Stark," Willas called, knocking with his free hand on the open study door. "A word, if you can spare the time."

"To offer my congratulations?" Jon smiled the closest he had to a grin, rising to his feet as he ushed the Lord in. "Please, and take them. I trust you and Sansa will be happy."

"I'll do all I can to make it so," he promised, nodding politely as he seated himself in the chair Jon pushed out for him. "But this isn't about our engagement, it's about the blacksmith, Ser Gendry."

And he didn't look surprised, just.. confused, Willas thought, a stern Stark brow arching. "Arya?"

"Gendry," he repeated. "He said he met Eddard Stark in King's Landing years ago."

"He did; he told us one evening," Jon nodded. "Says he asked him questions about his work, his family, much like Jon Arryn had before him."

"Jon Arryn? Robert Baratheon's Hand of the King before your Lord Father?"

"Aye. Jon Arryn and Stannis Baratheon he said when I asked, though it's said many a lord went to that smithy for work. The best near King's Landing. The best here." He paused briefly, grey eyes narrowing at nothing. "We're fortunate to have him here. All of us," he said, looking to Willas. And all of them, surely, but one more than anyone else, likely.

"Fortunate to have such a skilled smith, yes, I saw some of his work in the smithy," he told him, stretching his right leg in front of him.

"You met him?"

"Lady Arya told me so many good things about him that I had to see the esteemed Gendry Waters for myself." He grinned, and Jon almost grimaced.

"And?"

"Have you ever met a Baratheon?"

The infamous Stark stare returned, dark brows lofting in quizzical, still stoic confusion. "Stannis Baratheon and his daughter Shireen."

"Never Renly or Robert?"

"When King Robert came to demand my father act as Hand of the King, aye," he frowned. "Why?"

"That blacksmith is the image of Renly Baratheon," he told him, lowering his voice in all the conspiration of a closed private study's door as he leaned forward.

"..Once married to your sister? How is she faring?"

"Still joyous at the prospect of possibly wedding Warden of the North, thank you, and yes, that Renly Baratheon. I saw him wed my sister in Highgarden, and that man bears his image nearly identically. The dark hair, the Baratheon blue eyes," he said seriously. "He has the build of a younger Robert Baratheon, those looks most of all. It's striking." Jon only stared at him as he spoke, likely trying to picture the young smith looking exactly like the fat, drunk king he remembered Robert Baratheon being, but Willas remembered the tourney, the crown of blue roses, Robert's warhammer. He was shuddering before he could stop himself, clasping his furs more snuggly around his shoulders. "I thought I had seen a ghost at first," he admitted, but Jon couldn't smile at that, not when the dead had risen before.

"Waters," he said impassively, raising his gaze to the ceiling. "A bastard from King's Landing." Looking back to Willas, he shook his head, quelling doubt and disbelief and a sheer something else that would have him laughing with the rest of the gods. "And you believe..?"

"I've never met Edric Storm, but he was another of Robert Baratheon's bastard sons, bearing near identical looks; Renly said as much. I believe Gendry could be another, if your father and Jon Arryn and even Stannis came to ask after his parentage," he offered lowly. "I'd bet on it if I gambled."

"And that means," Jon questioned slowly, glancing down to his desk. "We have a young man that might have been king, could be the Lord of Storm's End?"

"You could ask our Silver Queen to legitimize him, if he wished it," Willas shrugged nonchalantly. "If she would deem it so. I doubt he would threaten her reign, he doesn't seem the sort that would desire to be king."

And it was too much, too much, Gendry Baratheon and Arya fancying Gendry, because for telling so many lies, she could just be so bloody awful at it sometimes whenever he asked her about him, but a king, a queen, the stories surrounding Robert and Lyanna in mind, the danger that could likely befall Gendry if anyone learned of his parentage, what a legitimized, highborn surname could mean for him. Arya.

"Bastards can learn to be ambitious," Jon said after a long moment, raising his hands to squeeze away the pressure at his temples. "Does he know?"

"I didn't tell him I suspected," Willas murmured. "But I did gawk at him for a good, long while, all proper and polite and lordly," he said off-handedly. "This is your country, you can tell him, and I'll ask you if I might wed Sansa in Winterfell's Godswood before I'm set to depart so that I might bring her with me."

"Does she wish it?"

"Yes, Lord Stark, we've discussed it, though she wishes to return here soon after, and hopefully, she'll convince Marjaery to accompany us. I know she's been longing to see Winterfell."

"Willas." And no titles, no formalities, just a comically tired look quelling his patience. "I won't wed."

"And I know that," he told him hastily, "but _she_ does not."

"I was never meant to reign in the North," the prestieged Lord Jon Stark, Warden of the North murmured with a vague glance around. Maybe it was because Willas would soon be his good-brother, maybe because something in him seemed so welcome and open he felt he could profess anything -- especially the truth. "I was to keep serving at the Wall. Winterfell never belonged to me. It was meant for Robb."

It sounded as if he'd say more, reflecting on his own thoughts, so his guest, soon good-brother, didn't say anything. Some thoughts needed to be articulate before they made sense.

"He's just like him, you know. Rickon." And Jon's smiling, and he's shaking his head, and grey eyes almost look bloodshot. "He looks exactly like him, like you think Gendry looks like Robert. Renly. A Baratheon. He looks like Robb, and he's nearly as tall as he was, even at only ten and twelve. Robb was barely older the last I saw him. And he can be loud and boisterous," Jon was saying, but he's laughing as he's shaking his head now, and those fucking gods. "You haven't seen him really listen in on meetings or lectures, but he's a smart lad. He has the mind of a leader, even though he practically grew up on Skagos."

And maybe Willas could understand the part about not being born to rule, though not for himself. He had been bred for it, and by the Mother's mercy and the other gods' wills, he never had to lose a sibling. But Garlan ruling his wife's castle and Loras the next in line -- what if the crushing fall in that tourney had taken his life? Could Loras have been the Lord of Highgarden one day? Sweet, good-natured, _beautiful_   Loras. More meant to be a rose than anything else.

"Winterfell will be his one day," Jon finished, and sometime, Willas noticed, he stopped smiling. "It wasn't meant for him, but it should be. I won't wed, won't have any heirs," but he would have, he knew, with red hair and mischief in their eyes and arrows in their hands, and he'd have crowned Ygritte the Queen of all Westeros if he could, but he couldn't, but he'd honor her memory at least, 'till he was as old as Master Aemon and sight had failed him though she'd still be standing there in his mind's eye, visible and bright and warm and his.

"It will be Rickon's one day," Willas told him in a solemn oath that could really ally the Starks of Winterfell and the Tyrells of Highgarden like a marriage could, and Jon nodded.

\- -- - -- -

_Hammer, hammer, hammer._

Steel against steel, metal scraping against metal, hammer striking against a sword and nearly shattering it.

Jon asked him if he ever knew who his father was. He didn't.

The skies were darkening, and night would be falling soon, and he kissed Arya Stark a couple hours ago, and he was a Waters, and he made his peace with that long ago, and all the world was shit and unfair, and the gods could laugh all over again, because maybe all stags turned to the drink in their grief after all.

But he wouldn't, couldn't; the few times he'd succumbed to wine led to terrible, irrational decisions and dancing.

He just outright said it, Jon did.

After asking if he knew his parentage, his mother, his father, when he had, _pardon my asking, Gendry_ , been left as an orphan, when he'd first been apprenticed by Mott, granted, but he outright said it.

_"Gendry."_

And Jon was short; he'd never really noticed before, even to his bulky tallness, but Jon was on the short side of life.

_"Gendry. You're the bastard son of Robert Baratheon."_

And he didn't know what he was expecting, truly. Not the throne of Westeros, gods' sake, no. Not even.. where did the Baratheon's rule? Storm's End? Not even there, because he was Gendry before he was anything else, and he stood there calmly, listening as Jon Snow explained to him what he and Lord Tyrell had tried to ascertain, and gods, no. He couldn't bear a previous King's name when he didn't have one, couldn't suddenly be the bastard son of a noble house when his own lowborn standing had been part of the bane of his existence.

He couldn't be a Baratheon when Arya was a Stark, when he decidedly tried to _pretend_   to try to not have fallen in love with her years ago when he was a ruffian baseborn bastard and she the Northern Princess always out of reach.

It couldn't work like that, that wasn't how his life ought to go. He wanted to be knighted because the ladies always swooned over the knights in the songs his mum would sing to him when he was a boy, and that seemed a quicker way to win the good graces of Arya when he was just fifteen and she not even a woman at ten, but perhaps that maybe one day --

Maybe one day.

He was calm when Jon told him.

He wasn't as stupid as Arya told him he was; he had heard the whispers of his likeness to the Usurper's own visage ever since he was small. Some things were fate, others coincidence, some just the gods' good humor.

But being a Baratheon in blood wasn't yet being a Baratheon in name, and Smith, Father, Stranger.

It didn't mean anything, and it didn't change anything, and that was a lie added to the list he told himself.

So _hammer, hammer, hammer_.

A bent sword was left discarded in the bucket of lukewarm water for sitting, and his hammer straightened another sheet of metal with a force the bulging veins in his arms protested. Here he was home in the heat of the forge, in the dying light of another day's work, of kissing Arya for the first time, and the steel was singing beneath his power, and he was crafting the only truth he'd ever _really_   known, the promise of weaponry and armor and steel and metalwork.

But he felt something change around him, and then he felt eyes on him, and Arya was watching him work before he turned to look.

She said something, and he said something, and she likely shouldn't be here this late at night; it wasn't proper, but she had never been a proper lady, and she just wanted to see him before she went to bed for the night.

He was sweaty, and he was gross, and he wanted to be angry that Jon had just bluntly told him something that didn't matter -- didn't, because he remembered he was lying to himself about that, and that little lie seemed so much easier to believe instead of the lie about not loving the girl standing before him, the girl gradually stepping closer with a confident sort of tentativity, he didn't know.

He almost told her then, because she saw he was frowning, saw that he was unhappy, and "Kiss me," she had told him, her voice small and determined and ordering him to do her bidding as casually and nonchalantly a contradiction as he ever heard.

But he wanted it to be different and special, and he felt himself grinning a cheeky smarminess as he teased a jape about courting her just so she would scoff at him and sourly shift her weight to her other foot, but she told him to kiss her again, and it sounded like a question this time, and while he didn't want her thinking he wanted anything other than to kiss her breath away, he was hesitant still, telling her again how it should be special. But she started biting at her lip, and then the kiss took her off her feet, and the world was a bit more fair than it was moments ago.

His arms enfolded around her waist, his palms were hot at her back, his fingers felt the faintest trace of skin at her lower back where her tunic had slipped up, and he was kissing her, kissing her lower lip, taking it between his own gently, feeling the supple softness of her kiss with a skimming nip of his teeth, a hot mark of his tongue at the seal of her lips, and he was kissing her, her hands cupping his cheeks and feeling silken soft against his scruffy stubble before they smoothed to his neck and threaded though his hair, and she was kissing him back, and he could taste something sweet on her breath, could feel her heart beating and thudding its own synchronized, greeting kiss against his, and she was kissing him, and he bit her lip when he bit back his groan when his hips wanted to press against hers.

And he pulled away from her, brushing his lips against his forehead when her fingers tried to draw him back closer, but he told her she best be leaving before he wakes up a eunuch (or a Baratheon), but red-faced and panting and beautiful with his tongue's wetness on her mouth, she left, and she touched her swollen lips as she walked back to the castle, and she grinned at no one.

Father. _Smith_. Warrior. Mother. _Maiden_. Stranger. Crone.


	11. And Many Other Things

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And maybe he's just reliving the feel of her fingers needily curling through his hair as his mouth slanted over hers, remembering the smack of her knuckles to his collarbones when he was stupid enough to fall from his horse and off a bridge and into a river, hearing her tell him of the direwolves of Winterfell and convince him she's one of them, feeling the exhaustion of anger and confusion and an identity crisis that's lasted nearly a day. Maybe it's everything that's brought them here, him here, but he's too cocky and hells-may-care when his fierce Arya Stark can't hold his gaze and anxiously chews at her lip again.

"I need you to sew something for me," she orders in that demanding tone he still can't bring himself to defy.

And if she were anyone but Arya, he would have thought she was coming up with silly excuses to see him, coy and innocent to spare the pretense of stealing (demanding) a kiss or fourteen, but she was carrying a worn tunic with a tear in the shoulder in one hand, a spool of thread in the other, and why was it always like this?

"Alright," he says, because it wasn't like he had to finish a knight's breastplate before the morning, not when he was sure Arya had a riveting explanation for why she came to him for needlework instead of other things it wouldn't do to think about now.

She sits herself quietly down next to him on the floor, her elbows resting on her knees as she worries the wool of her breeches with her fingers, and why had he mostly searched for a girl of eleven with the chopped hair and clothes of a boy when he had spent all those years looking for her? Even when his mind imagined the woman she must look grown when he was most definitely not imagining the woman she must look like grown. It was wrong then, but right now, and _right_ now.

Dexterously, he worked at trying to remember how to thread a needle the proper way, the way he'd seen the women at the Crossroads stitch a patch or two when necessary, but he was waiting for Arya to laugh at him and the women's work he wasn't sure where she learned he knew how to do.

"You're staring," he observes quietly to their companionable silence instead, his focus on his clumsy, repairing stitches not missing the turn of her head dropping from his face to his hands. "I know you could have mended this yourself," he tells her, giving her a quick look and trying to not dwell on how her lips tasted of honey and wine last night.

"I could," she agrees, and his mind's eye can see the half-smile curling the corners of her pink mouth and baring the faint chip in one of her front teeth, the same chip she got from pouncing on her father from a high tree in the Godswood as a girl.

He grins at the memory of how proud she was when she told him when he noticed the perfect imperfection that brightened her smile, when he was smearing more dirt onto her face to conceal the prettiness and the fairness of her cheekbones to anyone else's close inspection.

And he hears a tiny exhale from her next to him, and she must be smiling with him in the quiet of the forge, the only background noise the crinkling of the fire and the stretch of the fabric in his hands as he carefully stitches the rend, and this is nice. "Your seamstress would have done a better job," but his tone is all mirth, and this is really nice.

Acorn Hall, he decides. He can't really remember a time where he wasn't worrying after Arya (unnecessarily) and taking mind to ensure his m'lady's well-being, but if he has to think on when his perspective on her changed, it had to be then.

"If I went to the seamstress, she would start thinking I should be wearing more dresses."

He looks at her grimace and laughs, and oh, yes, Acorn Hall, where he first saw her as the Lady she was supposed to be and thought on how they'd ever be able to exist somewhere together -- though the possibility seemed so far away and just that: impossible. Until perhaps yesterday, or mayhaps all the weeks prior as she'd sit in the smithy with him or stroll with him along Winterfell's grounds or kiss him.

He thinks he's been kissing her easily those two times with a light bluntness, and he might have once taken impropriety as a slight, but he's shrugging now, and he's almost telling her how he might be of the Baratheon bloodline when all his hope had once gone to a mere knighthood of the songs that won noble ladies' hearts, but they're just them, and it seems that simple on the forge floor with the coals wearing down their spark and turning her grey ice eyes to molten pools of silver.

"But the dresses make you look nice," because he's stupid and any smithy can be Acorn Hall when she's scoffing at him when he's remembering her left side is more ticklish than her right. "A proper lady and everything."

"You'd like that, wouldn't you." Her tone is light and challenging, her brows arched and her mouth smirking when he looks, and it's a challenge he knows he'll lose every time, like their spars he submits to because the part of him that's not a very good knight likes how she can get him on his back and not knowing what to do with himself within seconds.

"Mayhaps," is all he says, smiling down to the seamwork that has him grateful he's a smith and not a tailor.

Or a Baratheon.

A pinch of anger and confusion and irritation is shadowing his face to a crumpled frown now, because he sees the look on Jon Stark's -- Jon Snow's -- face that is almost apologetic. Honorable Ned Stark was decent enough to claim a baby as his own, and his supposed father, the King Robert Baratheon, left him and his mum to the poor streets of Flea Bottom 'till she died, and he.. he what? He ended here. Abandoned by a whoring drunk, sold to a smith when sickness claimed his mother's life, given to the Night's Watch, taken to be tortured in Harrenhal, serving the Brotherhood Without Banners, staying with Arya. He can't complain when he's slow enough to try and think on the life he's been given, and again any thoughts of telling her he isn't a Waters but is dies.

"Gendry," he hears her murmur, and how long has he been staring at his still hands? She looks as if she'll reach for his face in a strange flicker of tender softness that has him closing his eyes, but she touches his sleeve instead, her small fist clinging to the rough fabric like she's trying to hold him here, to keep him back like he does her when she wakes him with her nightmares. "You look older when you frown like that," she says quietly. He can hear her frown, too.

"I am old," he offers lamely, twenty and two and pricking his finger with a sewing needle by accident, loving the snorted exhale of a laugh she whisks out to mock him. It's when he looks at her that he sees it, the slightly burned chafing of her chin from his stubble against her last night, and he almost feels bad, mostly starts to smirk. "I should have asked."

"Asked what?" She reached over his leg for the shirt, tying the last knot in the thread he'd been struggling with.

The Acorn Hall. The first time he saw her as a young woman, sure, but the semblance of a casual, routine life, the days spent in the forge, forest, dining hall -- like now. Then. "If I could kiss you."

Her face is impassive; a mask, and she never used to guard her thoughts so well, so poorly, a pinkness to her cheeks catching on the dimming traces of fire reflecting off her features. "You can kiss me whenever," she mumbles quietly.

And maybe he's just reliving the feel of her fingers needily curling through his hair as his mouth slanted over hers, remembering the smack of her knuckles to his collarbones when he was stupid enough to fall from his horse and off a bridge and into a river, hearing her tell him of the direwolves of Winterfell and convince him she's one of them, feeling the exhaustion of anger and confusion and an identity crisis that's lasted nearly a day. Maybe it's everything that's brought them here, him here, but he's too cocky and hells-may-care when his fierce Arya Stark can't hold his gaze and anxiously chews at her lip again.

"I knew that I could," he teases, because for it never being an option, there was always a choice. "I didn't know that I could 'cause you would let me." But she's rolling her eyes at him, muttering something about that not being what she meant, and as he's worrying she'll never let him kiss her again, he's falling just a bit more in love. "If you would rather I did ask --"

"Shut up." She doesn't sound mean through her smile, and her eyes are lighter when he holds up the mended shirt for her inspection. "I like it," she says, the same factual tone of double meaning he can see through like that poor mask of her face.

"I won't ask," he tells her instead, gruff and uncertain as he messes a hand through his hair, ruffling the long, unkempt strands to different directions.

"Fine," but she's crossing her arms without her usual bite, leaning back against the wall while she watches him and his darkened eyes, his flexed arms.

"You'll remember that you did ask me, though," he says, because while their silence is comfortable, her staring at him like that won't be.

"I didn't ask."

He's just as stubborn as she is, a fool for the quieter tone of her voice and the quake in her shoulders when she nudges his. "You commanded me then, m'lady."

And she elbows his sternum light-heartedly, and he doesn't know if he should wrap his arm around her or not. He wants to, but a nagging thought needs to tell her what he's thinking he won't, and his hand is against her forearm, trailing lightly to the curve of her wrist, curling around her fingers so he can lift it to his lips. He tells her palm what he can't in a kiss, the words of incredulity and love and whatever they're playing at here brushing against her skin tenderly, and he doesn't know what they are, what the future holds for them, but that much was never certain.

"Arya," he says like he does, soft in the hushed comfort of the warm smithy, smoke and honey and wine and iron and the fire dying in the forge, flooding through his veins, "Arya."

Acorn Hall. She once might have hated the close contact of romance, the clinginess that seemed to come with love, and he'd have to try and ask her later, the bastard blacksmith knight he was, what he was to the wild warrior princess. But her head is resting against his shoulder; he recognizes the deeper dregs of her breaths that meant sleep, and she's such a vision that he can't stand to wake her when peace is sleepily enchanting and calming her face and taking them back a year.

So he lifts her gently, turning so he could cradle her against his chest, her crown of brown hair soft against his neck, and he's passed caring what anyone would think if they saw him setting her gently on his floppy straw mattress, if they found her lying there.

"No," she murmurs tiredly when his arm leaves her side, because he has a breastplate to finish forging.

Once again he might have taken the word as a slight, an offense against him, but she's snoring softly, and they both don't want him to leave, and he has a deadline to keep.

Honor to keep.

Duty to fulfill.

Mercy to meet.

 _Hammer, hammer, hammer_ , the rhythmic pounding of stone to steel, of his thoughts to suffer and sort through.

Baratheons.

Starks.

Secrets. Vows.

_Hammer, hammer, hammer._


	12. Lovers Love To Sing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh, gods, she sees it, too.

It's the next morning.

Jon was pouting. He was blinking profusely from where he sat at the head of the table as if he was struggling with his own battle of slumber. His lips pursed like he was stifling yawns, and every so often his head would jerk back, awake and alert, after he dozed off.

And Sansa, sweet, composed Sansa, yawned behind her hand and feigned polite manners as she slumped backwards in her chair.

Rickon was less reserved in his attempts to conceal his sleepiness; he yawned brashly, largely, both elbows propped onto the table lest he tip forward with his nose in his bowl.

While Arya hated the morning light and cursed any and all who dared wake her before she was ready to face the cruel sunlight peaking through her window, she loved this. The simple humanity of her family all tired and grouchy and anything but poised and proper as they went about their early morning breakfast. It was so natural, so warm, and the pleasure of it almost distracted her from her aggravation.

She glowered at Gendry when he first entered the dining hall.

He wasn't looking at her, it seemed he was looking towards Jon (he nodded off again, and seven hells, it was good no one important was here except Arya) then Willas.

And for a rose, Lord Tyrell seemed rather folded in on himself sometimes. Quiet, rather solemn. He could be cheery and vibrant, certainly, but there was a solemn set of studious reserve that seemed to stick to him, too, like it could Jon. Mayhaps the trait was just one earned with the rest of the trials that came with ruling a renowed keep and castle, though still, there was something serious about the man. He had the seriousness Sansa said Marjaery Tyrell didn't, something that belied the glamor and flippant flair of other blooming roses, his chestnut curls askew and falling over one of his eyes in disarray.

Eyes that were staring at Gendry and her so intently it was almost disconcerting. 

Mayhaps Willas remembered the tourney years upon years ago like he remembered the feel of both his legs, Robert and Lyanna and blue roses from a Targaryen and the look on Oberyn Martell's face when his sister wasn't crowned, but he was just a boy then, and age could play tricks on the mind. 

Gendry smiled brightly as he strode in, and Arya still glared at him.

"Morning, m'lady," he greeted, gently ruffling her hair with his hand.

Mayhaps he was thinking on what her hair would look like all tousled on his pillow when they'd wake up one morning, but it wasn't like she'd know that.

 _Clueless_ , he thought she was up until a few days ago, though her occasional smirking and looking at him with that know-it-all mischief had him thinking she wasn't as oblivious to his feelings for her as he thought, and that didn't send his heart to his stomach or anything when he pondered it. The fool of a Waters he was.

Fool of a Baratheon, too.

"A handmaiden smirked at me this morning," she growled. It was one of the girls she liked, granted, one she would sometimes call squire as opposed to handmaiden, but details, details. "I didn't even know how I came to be in my room overnight," she continued, crossing her arms over her chest. She supposed she had fallen asleep in the forge yesterday, her last memories of consciousness before she woke were there with him and the confounded sewing, but the stupid had taken her to her own rooms instead of leaving her there with him. "Why?"

"To be preserving your honor?" he guessed, a questioning tone catching the broader curl of his mouth to a grin, white teeth set against the black ruggedness of his beard.

She saw him bow his head in respect to Willas, but shake his head towards Jon, and boys were so stupid. " _Your_  honor."

"Ser Arya the Vigilant, come to defend my honor."

"Fair Gendry, Maiden of the Hollow Hill," she deadpanned dryly.

He nudged her towards her family's table lightly, guiding her with a soft push of his hand to her back in familiarity. "Of Winterfell now," he corrected. "Go eat."

It was his turn to roll his eyes, and she swatted at his arm before she was out of his reach.

Not that he deserved it. _Of_ _Winterfell_ _now_.

\- -- - -- -

It's the next week.

And it was said the dark northern winters could cause a madness to settle over a person. Some went screaming into the night never to be seen again while some retreated to the dark haven of their homes, disappearing until the snows melted and thawed the grounds of the frozen insanity.

Maybe that was happening here.

Insanity.

Sansa seemed to smile more than anyone had ever seen (that was only a mild exaggeration), but she seemed more snippet than usual and had for the entire one week since her engagement. Where she had been planning for Lord Tyrell's arrival to Winterfell, she was now planning a wedding, the feast, the departure to Highgarden -- various people had already been notified of the impending nuptials, and it seemed she wouldn't rest until then.

"Sansa," Arya asked, cross-legged on the embroidered vanity seat her sister had committed her wedding vows to memory on. "You're leaving after the wedding, aren't you?"

She didn't wince when a seamstress's pin accidentally jabbed her skin through the heavy, dainty fabric of her wedding gown. "After the feast," she said.

And Arya expected more of a fuss, really. Sansa wasn't struggling to hold her breath while the alterations to the gown were being marked just so she'd appear more thin. If anything, she seemed more.. comfortable. Matronly in a way, and if her beautiful sister was having the gown designed to fit her body instead of conforming her body to fit the gown like she might have done when she were younger, then maybe there were more than the usual ways to grow up.

Sansa wasn't as silly as she once thought, and when she spent a few seconds thinking on that, it made her just a little sad. "What about the bedding?" she questioned for a change, faintly tracing the stitched patterns laced into Sansa's veil.

Sansa sputtered. "Arya!"

"What? It's an honest question if you're staying for the feast but leaving just after. The same night? Not morning? Will you spend the first weeks after your marriage travelling, for true?"

She pushed at her temples, crimson cheeks burning just as brightly as the red of her hair. "Arya," she sternly repeated, aghast.

And mayhaps Arya felt just a bit bad of her boldness, but in all due, the seamstress looked to be stifling her giggles as she pinned a pleat in the whitish yellow silks of Sansa's gown. When it seemed her sister was breathing easier again, she asked her next question. "Would you really wave your bedsheets outside the window for all to see if you do stay in Winterfell the following days?"

"Arya!" It was Jon's voice this time from the doorway, and both sisters startled.

"It was just a question," she muttered, and Sansa sighed. Again.

"Just an _inappropriate_ question," she stressed, straightening the hem of her sleeve. "One I don't believe I'll answer."

Pleasantly surprised his sisters ( _sisters_ , he sternly added in emphasis, cousins be damned) were seeming to get along civilly even if horrifically considering their topic of choice, Jon awkwardly stood in the doorway with half a mind to walk back the way he came.

"If you're going to come in, then do it. Enter with purpose, don't just linger," Arya frowned, lazily looking out the window.

The sun was high, and that meant just after noon. That meant lunch with Gendry as always, and that was always more appealing than waiting with Sansa.

"I've just some letters from the ravens, word from your wedding guests."

And it almost hurt all over again when Sansa smiled, the prospect of marriage she once longed for, then dreaded, then waited for all over again so near and brightening her grin so beautifully when Jon told her the news. She was a vision already in her stitched wedding gown, veil-less and flushing and radiant.

 _Mother must have looked like that_ , Arya thought dumbly and stricken, before she sneakily made her departure from the room.

\- -- - -- -

Another next week, and they sat over books.

A slate rest in front of Gendry where he reverently practiced etching his letters to stone, and according to Rickon, his script wasn't near curly and feminine enough.

But Gendry was starting to worry for the boy. He had seen him as thirteen and wild and fierce and boyish and mischievous and himself, still asking him on tips to best his sister in a spar, and even now still he grew taller with muscle beginning to line his frame.

He remembered Arya telling him how uncannily he bore Robb Stark's likeness, but he didn't like to think on that when the King in the North had been the same age as Gendry, sixteen, when he was killed. And when he grew up most his adult life hearing of his resemblance to the Usurper, some charm to the notion was lost.

Though from boyish and young to studiously quiet, Rickon did seem to change a bit. And then again, more untamable, more the wild and free spirit he imagined Robb Stark had been when Arya told him he was probably a direwolf, too.

He was reading quietly across from Gendry, rocking every so often in his chair and tapping his feet and fingers on the floor and table, something, something, Aegon the Conqueror.

 _A_ , _E_ , _G_ , _when you seem them like that, it's pronounced like egg_. Or so Shireen told him.

But when the boy paused midsentence sometime after the word _history_ , Gendry looked up. Rickon's usually bright face was riveted in confusion, and when the seconds ticked by without him finding a word to match the letters on the page, he reached for the book in a silent offer to help. Gendry didn't know many words, but at least he could help Rick sound out the letters like he would when he helped him.

"..Ab-- about," he said after a short moment, sounding out the letters until recognition and memory captured the word he wasn't sure how his reading teacher forgot.

Rickon blinked, confusion vanishing with a wolfish grin, and "About," he repeated. "About." He went back to tracing the letters in the book without reading them aloud, and Gendry resumed his writing.

\- -- - -- -

Rickon hadn't spoken since then.

Another week, and all last night, the direwolves in Winterfell howled ceaselessly. Ghost and Nymeria and Shaggydog all, though Shaggy the loudest like he was the wildest.

Lord Stark was said to have spent most of his night in the crypts. Rickon was seen wondering to the forest area outside the gates. Even Gendry didn't know where Arya was, but she laughed at him and how much he cared about her honor when he asked.

"I'm worried about Rickon," he tells her.

And he really should be. Arya knew. Not everything about the boy's life in Skagos raised by the wildlings, but enough, like how sometimes something would seem to take her brother in his dreams so he'd wake up more wolf than boy. He crouched from high junctures and waited in silence, watching everything with his direwolf by his feet.

Shaggy was the only wolf in Winterfell that'd bite for fun, but when these moods would take Rickon like he was mad, he grew his Stark teeth, too.

 _The Cannibal King Beyond the Wall_ , he used to tease, laughing with Arya.

Seven hells.

"He's just as fine as the rest of us," she answers. She thought it was sufficient enough. "He hasn't known how to read and write his letters for much longer than you have," she adds when he asks. "Perhaps a year? Teaching you teaches him."

They were having their lunch in the forge like they always did, she eating while Gendry finished whatever he was working on, she eating again when he finally sat down to the meal she always stole part of.

But sometimes -- today -- she talks more than she usually does.

Another nightmare last night, and she prattles and talks to the loudness of the forge and watches him work, watches him sneak quick glances to her mid-strike to show that he's listening. Or tries to, and she wonders how much he really hears.

Years ago, she used to bother Mikken when he was working and ask him all sorts of questions Theon told her were annoying, but this is different. This is Gendry, and she thinks he might know that she talks more for herself than him somedays. Today.

So she rambles on, filling the empty spaces left deathly quiet since he paused. He stops entirely, leaves his hammer on the anvil, leaves a tray of bolts on a shelf where he'll remember them later, and listens to the stories she tells him. They're always tales of her, of Arya Stark, and if he notices she seems unlike herself and lost, he doesn't tell her.

But recognition and identity settle in her stormy grey irises always, eventually, always on the nights the dreams start to overtake her, and she told him about the Faceless Men, yes, but she hasn't yet told him everything.

It looked as if he wasn't telling her everything either sometimes, but he never called her out on the lies she told or the secrets she kept, so she didn't say anything about it. She just talked.

_"Willas brought several crates with him to Winterfell because Sansa loves lemoncakes."_

_"The Warrior should be prayed to instead of the Maiden for virtue, right? He can protect it better."_

He listens intently, nodding in all the right places, letting her chatter without his interruptions.

_"I think she'll be happy in Highgarden. She's already a rose."_

_"Jon told me that I sounded like Mother the other day. I think I hate that man from the Brotherhood even more for what he did to her."_

_"I forgot I was supposed to be keeping the numbers financially."_

"You haven't spoken about kissing me," she says next, and the silence stretches between them. "It's been weeks," she continues, trying for the usual factual tone she quips and using its nonchalance as a different set of armor.

But he's still quiet, staring at her with those impossibly blue eyes inches away from hers, and she decides they don't need to talk.

The fleeting feel of her heart thudding in her ears, her summoned courage pretending to be confidence, her fingers curling into the front of his jerkin, and her mouth pushing against his. It's as gentle as the first time their lips pressed to a kiss, her mouth softly covering the slight dryness of his in a tender touch, and it's just as familiar as it is new

Like she was trying to remember how their mouths moved together and how she fit against the warmth of his kiss so they felt like one -- how it felt like instinct could be this renowned when everything was starting to burn, and everything was: red and bright and she was kissing him now with something light spreading through her chest, something cautious and delicate like neither of them really were.

But this felt perfect, and her fingers trail their absent path to the nape of his neck. It's warm, and his thick hair is sweaty against her fingers, and she pushes herself up to her knees to better reach him, because like hells he was moving away from her when the ghosted kiss of his lips felt kindling and prickling with the air muggy and warm around them.

Except he's shockstill, unresponsive, worrying her.

That kiss was just awful, wasn't it?

She pulled back just a breath to see him, to see herself in the black of his eyes, and she couldn't admit her defeat or inexperience to the quiet of the forge and her slight panting breaths. "Gendry," she said, soft and fierce, "you have to kiss me back for this to work."

So slowly, he began to grin, his eyes half-lidded as he watched her pink lips tug down to a frown. When he kissed her the next moment, there was nothing chaste about it.

A gasp of fresh air in the sweltering heat of the forge, and he gently guided her forward with his callused fingertips cupping her cheek, tilting her face upwards to better meet his lips. She could faintly taste traces of the honeymilk on his breath when the warmth of it brushed over her like his beard did, chafing her chin lightly, stirring the soft heat that muddled inside her once more. Somewhere through her veins, something that felt a dreadful lot like her heart, but this wasn't the touch of sadness she was feeling days ago.

This was good, and everything was so warm, and he was mumbling something against her mouth she couldn't make out when the heated prod of his tongue was pressing against her own. His hands traced down the arc of her back so his arms could wrap around her tightly and pull her closer to him, forward, her hands sliding across his shoulders and over the coarse cloth, biting into the fabric tightly with a push, a pull.

They were moving together, noses brushing with the returning kisses touching more passionate, more hard, a heated trick of their tongues matching whatever rhythm their bodies knew that their minds didn't. He broke away to suckle at her lower lip, and she wanted to kiss any doubts from his teeth as she pushed herself flush to him, knees wobbling until she was languidly astride him, all thighs and hearts pressing together and beating out their own greeting.

When his grip tightened around her waist and his hands fisted in the soft silks of her shirt, a quiet noise caught her throat, a faint hum of a moan, and he let the wet flesh of her tongue curl around his own in his surrender. He was lost, but she was, too, abandon lost to the hard, uncomfortable floor he sat on with the warm feminity of her over him. It was still so good, and passion made her almost pliant, and when her thighs tightened around him in a meaning suddenly so needy to her, his nose was at the hollow of her throat before he caught himself.

His lips were a breath away from her neck; he could breathe in all of her, and her fingers threading through his hair held him back towards propriety. "Arya." He sounded too gruff for his liking, strained, and she could feel his heart thudding against hers. "This has to be done right."

Panting, she rolled her head back instead of her eyes, more pale skin of her neck freed to where she felt his beard rough at her tender skin. "We aren't doing it wrong," she sniped.

But he laughed before he could stop it, and tenderly, he set a soft kiss to the white column of her throat. "And you know that?" he teased, jealousy the last thing on his mind when she's before him, straddling him, her lips swollen when he pulled back far enough to see. Her eyes were still closed.

"No."

"This has to be done right, Arya." He repeated, his voice mostly returned to its normal pitch.

There's soot smudged to her cheek where his hand cradled her face, and she'd think it perfect if she could see it. But she can't, so she moves back from him instead, not as careful as she might be with her knees. "Or you don't.. want to. Is all," she shrugged, rebuilding her armor of nonchalance to hide the fragility of her ego since the rest of her felt so weak. And warm. And starting to hurt.

He's protesting even as she stepped closer to the door, but she's gone before he can stop her, hearing her call him stupid instead.

\- -- - -- -

It's another two weeks before she speaks to him again.

It's the day before Sansa's wedding, and Arya stopped being mad at Gendry about a week ago, but being sore at herself and her coldness to him didn't feel good. So her sister kept her busy with preparations instead, and when she asked about Gendry, she said he was busy.

It wasn't a lie, being Winterfell's smith kept him occupied with various repairs and the like, and -- Jon told him time. To wait. She'd come around.

Not that Gendry told Jon why Arya was mad at him or anything. He didn't tell him why he hadn't told her about his lineage either; it didn't matter.

But it was the day before the wedding.

All the attending guests, just a few, had arrived already, like Marjaery Tyrell, the Rose of Highgarden. There seemed something almost faded about her, faded, not wilted, but dressed in the excessive and elaborate splendor of the Southron styles, she was still quite the radiant flower. Giggling, she and Sansa had been awake all the night prior.

Also in attendance, Tyrion Lannister. The Imp. He and Sansa had made their peace after their voided marriage and came to call each other friends now after everything. But when he bowed his head to Lord Tyrell, he welcomed him to Sansa's beloved collection of cripples, bastards, and broken things with a smile.

Shireen, the once Princess, was present, too, and had been for nearly a week. Shaggydog had trotted straight towards her and nuzzled his face to her gloved hands -- the only person besides Rickon the direwolf permitted to touch him.

They went for lots of walks, the pair, and Rickon was finally speaking again, more tame by Shireen.

Or Shireen was just more wild with him.

Another guest, though. Lord Edric Dayne of Starfall. Dorne was at least partially represented since Oberyn couldn't see his friend marry the love of his life, but Arya's old acquaintance seemed to be here for more than a wedding.

"I think he wants to court you," Sansa had told her.

Arya grimaced again at present, cringing because she remembered the blue-purple-eyed boy with the Brotherhood, and no. No. His hair was too light, his frame too willowy. He smiled too often. Smiled at _her_ too often, and her eyes were glancing around the dining hall for Gendry instead.

He was laughing with some men at a table, all of them looking well into their cups. It was another feast, one not as grand as the one tomorrow was to be, but everyone seemed to be enjoying themselves nonetheless. Sansa and Marjaery were tittering over some story Willas was telling them, Jon was talking to some man she didn't bother taking the effort to name, Rickon and Shireen were seated as close together as manners would allow until she stood to wander off somewhere for _just a moment!_ she chided. Ned was opposite Arya, telling something to someone else, and when Gendry glanced up, over, staring at her with a dreadful look of something serious, he suddenly snorted, sputtering his drink at something another man said. She could almost hear his loud, booming laugh from across the hall.

"You look as if you'd be enjoying yourself more if you were drinking," a voice said, the Imp and his wistful, droll mismatched eyes sighing as he claimed the seat next to her. "I know this because _I'd_ be enjoying myself more if I was drinking."

"Then why aren't you?" She couldn't help but ask; it was years ago all over again, half Winterfell's stores drained by the Queen's brother's thirst.

"Milady, your servants have graciously been instructed to not serve myself any wine." He shook his head sadly, but then his grin was bright and strange on his face. "I know where the cellars are," he added, laughing. "Though I must say, I'm far more interested in what's captured your attention. Some young fellow? Is it a passionate, romantic tryst? You must spare no vicarious detail; I need my substitutions."

Arya broke her stare away from Gendry to laugh, looking to Tyrion and his easy manner of speaking. Despite or because of everything, she liked this Lannister. "Well, I couldn't divulge every detail," she teased back, smiling in return to Shireen's grin of white teeth and half-scarred lip and bright blue eyes as she skirted past. Familiar blue eyes when the candlelights caught them, she noticed. "I have to keep some type of secret, don't I?" She looked back to Tyrion, but he wasn't looking at her.

"Baratheon," he said, and Arya nodded, looking to where Shireen had sat next to Rickon. "I can see it."

"Shireen of House Baratheon."

"No," the Imp said cooly. "That boy is a Baratheon."

Frowning, because the Lord of Storm's End wasn't supposed to be here, she followed Tyrion's gaze towards Gendry, still gazing at her. "What?"

"That boy. Young man. Interesting," he offered, and he hopped off the bench, likely in search and need of a drink.

Gendry's still staring at her from across the Hall, lofting his hand to push his pitch black hair out of his blue eyes, and oh.

She can see it, too.

And she remembers seeing those eyes years ago, nine years old and hating the dirty clumps of her chopped hair. Annoyed and paranoid and absently staying close to _the Bull_ because he didn't talk much and that was safe, but it's hitting her now, the vague sense of familiarity when he looked at her then for the first time, all blue eyes bright in the sun.

Blue like the fat King, blue like the Lady of Dragonstone when Tyrion said _Baratheon_  and was talking about Gendry and not Shireen, and oh, gods, she sees it.

Oh, gods.

His confused expression only shadowed as he kept watching her, and how had she never known? Why would Father and Stannis Baratheon and Jon Arryn have wanted to talk to him if not because of that? Why else would the Kingsguard have been hunting him down? What had he told her when he spoke of Lady Brienne? She looked as if she'd seen a ghost, said the name of Renly Baratheon. Why hadn't she known?

Her chest feels like it's seizing in the too-tight bodice of her Stark grey silk gown, her breaths raptured and her mind whirling, and Gendry's standing from his table and crossing nearer to her until he stops.

Another hand touches her arm, and Ned Dayne is asking if she'd fancy walking about for fresher air. She does but can't say why he's actually leading her outdoors; she's remembering Father tell them King Robert wasn't always so fat. He was young and handsome once. Strong, broad, a champion fighter with a war hammer.

Oh, gods.

"Arya?" Ned asks, because she wasn't listening.

They're already outdoors. He'd been saying something. Spring snows had fallen, she realizes, the same instant she sees his hand is trying to curl through hers. "Ned," she starts, drawing back, but he's pressing forward, and she only just caught her breath and _really_ doesn't need this. "Ned," she repeats, more fiercely, trying to steer him away from the kiss he's trying to force.

"Oi!" someone shouts, and she recognizes it as Gendry.

Nevermind she didn't know he was following them and wants to scorn how he likely thinks he'll rescue her -- the diversion is all she needs to raise both fists up so she's prepared to strike, and Gendry grins darkly like he couldn't be prouder if he hit the man himself.

But Ned is apologizing profusely for his conduct, and she's shouting, and this moment is gone as quick as it came in the rush of everything else this evening. Dayne won't presume to lay a hand to Arya sober or otherwise, he swears it as he walks away, and when Arya faces Gendry, she expects to see a Baratheon.

But it's just him, and stumbling through the snow, her hand finds his when they find their way to the Godswood.

In front of the weirwood, beside the pond, it's quiet. The stars are bright, leaving his eyes just as blue as they've always been, and she walks forward into his arms knowing he won't hesitate to wrap them around her. She sighs when he does curl around her, arms happily entwining through arms.

It's cold outdoors until he's so warm like a furnace, his fingers gingerly curling through the loose curls of her chestnut hair at his sternum. "Arya?" he asks softly, lowering his chin to rest atop the crown of her head. She hums in response, listening to his heart pulsing through his chest. "Are you going to wed him?"

He's half-jesting, she thinks, quiet, and she squeezes her arms around him. "I don't want to," she says, because they both know that was the ultimate factor. When he exhales a short breath like he's laughing, she claws her fingers into the back of his cloak to keep him against her, just in case. "Was your father King Robert Baratheon?"

She listens to the silence for a long moment, hears it stretch and thicken and fade with his breaths and the snowdrifts. She counts to ten. "Why didn't you tell me?" she asks next, just as quiet.

But questions like those can't be answered simply, and she won't pry too much if he's unwilling. She knows enough. "If I was a lord," he starts instead, tightening his arms around her waist to lift her so she's standing on the hard toes of his boots instead of the wet snow. "You'd be my wife."

And it's her turn to fall to silence, to hear every whisper of the wind through the Godswood trees billow around them. To hear her heart thudding again, so he's speaking her turn for her. "I've loved you since I was six and ten," he says, easy as a breath, like he's been saying it for years.

And maybe he has, his rough hands gently weaving through her hair again with the same intent wonder and awe, something that used to twist his stomach to knots when the question of his love for her would keep him up all night.

She wants to tell him not to love her, that love was something ridiculous like she might have said moons ago, but she can't bring herself to. Her cheek pressed against his chest, it's a whisper at first, starting from somewhere in her heart only he seemed to reach, and she traces the lines of the heart tree with her free hand, says it. "Robb nearly started a war to marry the lowborn girl he loved," she says, and the meaning underlies it.

Thinking of the worth of dying for love or not is confusing, so he tugs at her hair gently to garner her attention. "You don't have to fight the world for this, Arya."

"Just Ned Dayne," she grumbles, bitter, teasing, and he kisses her forehead.

When she looks up to him, he's giving her a look that could stop hearts and freeze breaths and lead to giggles and sighs, but it's the frozen breath that catches him. "You're shivering," he says, frowning at the clouds of her breath fogging the space between them.

With one hand, he frees the clasp on his dark cloak and smiles when it engulfs her tiny frame, though his smile falters when she looks at him like that. She blurts the words before she can steal them. "Do you have any vows?"

The weirwood, the whisper of the wind, him placing his cloak around her shoulders. He's passed beyond being surprised; her chest constricts again when he smiles at her.

"Mayhaps," he chances, brushing a stray snowflake off her nose. "Is this how it's done in the North?"

"Before the gods, the trees."

When her shoulders shake with another shiver, he releases her so he could tug his cloak more snuggly around her, holding it closed at her collarbones. Leaning down, he rest his forehead softly against hers. "What do you vow?"


	13. Am I Dreaming Once Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "We survived in forests alone before," he teases, tugging her forward so she folded into him with his chin atop her head.
> 
> "This is literally a Godswood. Are we married now?"

Leaning down, he rest his forehead softly against hers. "What do you vow?"

And the wind whispered another shiver of cold air frozen around them and rustled through the snowy leaves cast overhead, and her heart feels like it's swallowing all her chest with how erratic it's beating and stirring all the warmth she feels in her veins, and "Vows," she says dumbly, her voice quiet in a breath away from his.

"Vows," he repeats, and she can feel his beard twitch in a grin more than she can see it.

"Promise me something."

"Anything," he swears, so stalwart and solemn and serious her chest seizes again.

"Something in a vow, I mean."

He's silent a beat, hiding his face in her hair when another frozen dredge of wind frees loose snow swirling around them. "You know that I," he starts, before something disbelieving and giddy in him starts to laugh, "I don't have anything to offer you."

But he's chuckling more deeply, his teeth a white glint in the moonlight, and how insignificant it seems to be born a bastard -- a king's bastard -- when he feels her laugh against his cheek so light and free, her dress's hem muddied and snow soaked and drenching through his pant leg, her lips pressing tenderly to the corner of his mouth.

It still led him here, canopied under hushed leaves and freezing early summer snow. He'd always cherish her pink cheeks.

"I don't want anything from you, 'sides," she tells him, feeling his shiver on his shoulders as he turns.

"You do," he confirms. Backing her into a tree, footsteps blending together in the snow, he gives her that added bit of warmth his towering form provides. "You want to be self-dependent, but you want to be taken care of, too."

Most of the cold's eating at him, but it's a different feeling of warmth in a cloak, in love, the moon catching his eyes beyond the trees, the clouds. "I do?" She asks, in part teasing because she knew the answer before he spoke it. "And you could do that?"

He snorts. "Aye, m'lady. _Milady_. How you highfolk say it?"

"Mmm," she muffles, drawing up to press her cold fingertips to his neck. His wince carried to another laugh, and she let her fingers scant up to his jawline, grinning as his beard roughed against her palms. "What else?"

"Do I vow?"

"Do you vow."

He pretends to think, but neither of them really are outside of each other, and they aren't thinking about that. "To love you," he says after a long moment, quiet in the sudden silence of the trees, the gods. "I have; I will."

She's really not prepared for the look in his eyes when he says it, his blue eyes dark again, intent on her like she was everything he ever wanted in truth. Ice should have been melting around them, and "I'm.. I am happy," she declares.

And it's so simple, those words, a sudden sigh that has him just as contented as she feels. Something warm and pliable, soft in the strength that has her reserved nature forgotten with him, _loved_ when he shifts to tighten his grip around her waist, and it's a start. She's smiling again, and then he's laughing with her, and it's a start to never enough.

"And I wouldn't call you _my lord_ regardless," she tells him next in an afterthought, and they both snort like they're drunk on the sept's wine instead of each other. "And supper would probably never be waiting for you the instant you'd be home. And I'm better with a bow than a broom, but you know that, but I've never been one to keep house or clean."

"Arya," but she silences him with how she's moving, unfastening his cloak from around her shoulders and reaching up to drape half of it over one of his.

"It's supposed to mean protection," she tells him when it's draped over both of them, giggling in a strange, bright way that feels nearly bursting with the swell of emotion leaving her just as breathless as he makes her. Her ribs beneath his hands are starting to ache from the cold and their peals of high laughter, but everything is perfect.

"I won't be presuming you need more protection than you can deal, Arya." Though he'd always be there just in case -- she knew that.

"I can protect you, too," she mumbles, and he had to bend his knees just a bit to lower himself to her height to hear, a teasing glint to her tone he'd take in stride, to heart, because she wasn't wrong. He didn't want her to be. "Might be one of my only redeeming qualities."

His palms squeeze her waist to silence the subtlety of her self-doubt, his beard prickling against her forehead as he presses a cold kiss to her temple. "No. I know who you are, Arya."

And he did, and her heart seized as the wind picked up. "Where could we go?"

"Anywhere you want so long as it's not King's Landing."

"Damn," she whispered, giggling in her sarcasm, "that's where I want to be."

A slow drawl, and if he's speaking all his heart to her when she's holding it, he won't quiet any of the paramounting affection and raw emotion slowly taking them with another bitter chill of the wind, even if he suspects she'll scoff at him. "Here's where I want to be," he says after a pause, waiting for another laugh or snort.

There's another glint of white teeth in the shadows betraying her smile and betraying his when she traces the lines of his lips slowly. "I want to be here, too."

"Then we'll never leave."

"We have to move eventually, stupid."

"We survived in forests alone before," he teases, tugging her forward so she folded into him with his chin atop her head.

"This is literally a Godswood. Are we married now?" A little curve, and she pressed his cloak fully around the both of them.

"I told you if we're doing this, then we're doing it proper," he murmured, sighing softly at the warmth that had all to do with her. "I have to talk to your brother. You'll have to wear white, black, red, anything you want. And we'll marry proper-like."

"I thought you just meant proper about our.. coupling." Because that was delicate enough when she never heard him really curse.

He choked, ragged in shock though he shouldn't be surprised his tender moment was.. _that_. "This is a Godswood! You can't be talkin' about that," he huffed, stepping forward so she was back against the tree with him pressed over her when the wind shook again. "It's not ladylike either."

"Neither the fuck am I."

"Arya."

"Gendry," she mocks, just as frown-sounding as his tone, and they nearly collapse in their snowy foot tracks, him laughing into her hair, her giggling against his neck and clutching the cloak tight.

\- -- - -- -

An hour later, they've stopped laughing.

It's like it's been drained from them, and they warily walked further into the trees to sit on the cold ground by the pond. But there's something somber about them now. Even the wind quieted while they took to sobriety from their impassioned hysterics and settled next to each other, just enough space between them to rest all the truths and uncertainties and realities they ignored moments upon moments ago.

When she finally told him everything about her time with the Faceless Men, he almost wished she hadn't.

Her shoulders were shaking, but she didn't flinch when he reached for her, and she curled onto him like she used to when she was younger, when the action was more childlike and innocent and not the least bit disparaging.

But one problem lay to rest, and her right cheek was warm with his soothing breaths while the rest of her warmed to the unsettling of her heart marking everything for true.

"I love you," but it was sudden, soft and quiet where it fell easy from her pulse to her lips to the air to him, but he kept the sway of gently rocking her back and forth in a soothing rhythm like he hadn't heard her.

 _The stupid_ , she thought, though it was her first smile in an hour.

"It doesn't have to change anything," she said next, his Baratheon name, but it sounded like a lie, and he stilled beneath her.

"'S the only way I can marry you proper, isn't it?"

"Weddings in the North only need a Godswood to be proper."

She sounded stern, knowing that isn't what he meant, and he silenced her by pressing the cold tip of his nose to her cheek. "I don't mean that. You know what I mean," because he wasn't going to say it, sighing with the sharp breath she inhaled, a bastard -- even a king's bastard -- couldn't wed Arya and preserve everything the Starks kept.

"I mean that you're stupid," she muttered, and the wind picked up, blew against the trees, waved a bit of snow from the heavens.

"And you're stupider," he countered sweetly, biting back his laugh with a charming grin and his gloved fingers to her hair. "I'd kiss you for it, but if our lips froze together.." He trailed off unsurely, but this was a thought he could think about, not names, titles, privileges, rights.

He ruffled her hair when it still seemed she was scowling at him, but up, he lifted her and began walking, telling her how he would have to talk to Jon. When he would do that. "Keep the cloak 'till you get inside in the warmth. Think you'll be able to sleep tonight?" Because terrors and dreams awoke with the darkness of everything else, and he held her more tight against his chest when he remembered what she told him about the Faceless Men.

"Perhaps." The wind was louder than she was, and their footsteps were nearly faded in the snow.

"If not," he started slowly, "you know my door is always open." Inhibitions be damned.

"I know. So's your window." He didn't have a window.

But he could make one -- maybe a home with it. A surge of hope hit his chest when she did, the light slap gesturing him to set her to her feet.

"Here," she said, the middle of a courtyard, the snow lighter, stray people walking around the walls. "Tomorrow?"

She was bright, and she was brighter grinning up to him in the same hopeful, ecstatic way as earlier, and "I love you, too," he said back to her for the first time she told him, but maybe she didn't hear.

He still grinned all his walk to the forge.

 


	14. Some Fret It, Forget It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They all might be thinking the same thoughts, of wolves, winds, fortune, the whispers of the trees they could likely hear if they tried hard enough, but some thoughts are private, some secret notions kept just to smile at, a habit turned routine.

Dawn rolls in, rolls away, grey skies billowing in the streaks of the bright sun pouring through the clouds, lingering and coloring the leaves of the trees, sparking a touch of life on such divine a day, it's gone just as swiftly as it came.

There aren't any graves, but there are the whispers, and in the touch of the quiet, as soft as a breeze, the leaves will sing, the trees will softly chant their will, and the faded lines don't look to be the gruesome sight of tears. They're life, and this is their life now, and some things still can't be said.

Rickon never speaks of Bran.

He was the first true Northerner in years and years, hundreds of them, and the sacrifices people make, the secrets they keep, the treasures they guard with clever words and a slip of the mouth -- it's just as eerie as Southron blood finds the blood lining the trees' eyes.

"Don't bother praying to the gods," Rickon had said one day. To himself, to the shade of Gendry's frown, to the shadows, to his savage direwolf at his side, no one knew. "They don't talk back."

But he hadn't meant it, not truly, just on the days the night was darkest and full of the terrors that came in flashes of memories and screams, and gods, he'd rather be the wildling king than be here somedays, though this is home, this is family, and the direwolves of Winterfell almost all came back.

As quick as he could be with a laugh, as animated as his chatter could be, he had stopped the pretense of asking Gendry how to best Arya in a fight.

Just give the youngest Stark a spear to see how naturally his callused, scabbed knuckles shape to its hold, and as swift as a sprite, as rabid as a dog, his teeth are bared, his legs are holding him to a crouch to kill, and he could, and anyone that says kindgoms aren't born of blood are lying, that wolfblood is gone with the dragons.

Jon never speaks of many things, but it always used to be that way.

In his dreams, he sees her, and in his dreams, he's still as wild as a wolf, as free as a crow, as captive in the freedom of that and the love of three arrows through his chest.

He scarcely speaks of Robb, though, to anyone besides Rickon.

They said the King in the North couldn't be killed, but they stopped saying the King in the North died, too, and the frozen tundra icing his throne paid homage to the concept of reign and the fierce heart of a champion that should have ridden forever in waving banners, in grey winds, a heavy crown worn better on auburn hair than it ever did on ebon.

He doesn't think the statues in the crypts resemble those they lost, but his memories aren't any better, not outside of the dreams he won't speak of.

Sansa won't speak of who she had been, and even less than never will she speak of the pain with it.

Not the physical pain, no, any hurt that ever tore at her skin faded the instant she saw Arya's face in the mirror, the horror, the grief, the rage with it at seeing the white scars lining her fair, pale back, dusted with freckles and poorly hidden by sheening North fire hair.

But the memories, the wounds that come with recollection and reminiscent the nights a sheath in the dark brings everything back without the tearful smiles her siblings grow to grin when speaking of Mother and Father.

Almost all the direwolves came back to Winterfell, and sitting in the shadows of the crypts, morning light only candles along the walls, they're silent.

It's Eddard Stark's visage chiseled in time they skirt around, kneeling before, sitting by, and the memories are like the shapes looming in the shadows on the walls, beaten back only by the licks of the flame on the candles' wicks, and candles are more sanctuary than anything, just like they always had been.

The three are silent, and Rickon's looking to Sansa's loose flame hair because somedays she seems so like the shade of Mother he barely remembers, and she's touching Jon's sleeve while he stares up, up, always up, to the highborn, honorable, stoic face of their father watching them in stone, and time really caught up to them, didn't it?

Winter came, as it will again, and the skies outside are dark, bright in the grey that might promise more snow to bless its white dust on a marital union, and neither child knows how they came to be here, in truth.

To be back here after everything, to have survived everything in the grand way Mother always told them they were her good, strong children, growing up, though Sansa doesn't know who's left to grow in that way.

She clasps the fur of her robe closer to her, warding off the chill she no longer feels when she hears it; soft, quiet.

The hint of a laugh, and it's Rickon, and whether it's at how quiet and stoic they all are, the hysteria he laspes into because he's still just a boy for being a man, or the awkwardness in which they all wait, she doesn't know, but then his subtle laugh is a loud snort because he's just _Rickon_ , and Jon's laughing, too.

He shakes his head as he laughs, and he looks to the shadow of his brother's tossed back head with his guffaws before peering to Sansa, and she can't help her own laugh. It's quiet before it's deafeningly loud, all of them breathless and chortling and filling all the emptiness and the fullness of shadows and memories and the dead and the living in breaths of their wondering just how they were fortunate to come back to this.

Rickon huddles closer to Sansa, and Jon sides closer to her, snickers again when Rick snorts.

There's no turmoil now, they're just pups on the floor, and "You're going to be a Tyrell today," he says, panting and huffing at his red hair where it's fallen into his eyes.

"A Highgarden Rose," Jon adds, and she remembers Margaery teetering and calling her the Flower of Winterfell once.

"No," and her next laugh is almost a giggle, something bright and girlish and young before she sobers, before she might have been Queen in the North. "A Stark. Still a Stark."

Strong and cold without being detached, fierce and steadfast. Catelyn Tully, because in the end, she was more wolf than trout, too.

"A Stark."

"A Stark." Jon's the last to say it, the newest to it, always one with fire in his blood, and he looks back up, up, always up to Eddard Stark's face, and it's the familiar smile he sees in Rickon.

They all might be thinking the same thoughts, of wolves, winds, fortune, the whispers of the trees they could likely hear if they tried hard enough, but some thoughts are private, some secret notions kept just to smile at, a habit turned routine.

"We are waiting for Arya, aren't we?"

Because she isn't with them, though Rickon knows where she is since he was awake when he'd heard her treading down their corridor, silently opening the lumbering door, escaping into the chilled night air off to gods know where.

The gods did know where, and the trees didn't look as if they were crying hours before she stepped back into the snow, back to the forge, fresh snow lining the well-worn path and sprinkling something magical and beautiful and bright to the world when she already felt as if she were soaring in it.

She'd dreamed about that, not of the terrors that sometimes crept into her dreams, but when she awoke hours still before daybreak, she missed Gendry.

And this could have been their wedding night, but she didn't want to think about that, stomping her boots of the snow she'd gathered in the entry to his work. No thinking of soft sighs or his rough hands or his tongue or.. oh, gods.

Huffing, she tossed her (his) cloak over an anvil, blinking to let her eyes adjust to the pitch black of the room, stepping slowly and cautiously just in case he left anything she could walk into lying around. She didn't need any stubbed toes or bruised shins to darken what was still so warm about tonight, and the floor was hot beneath her bare feet, the forgotten coals in the fire dark and hot and welcoming to her as she pushed back the leather curtain separating the smithy from his room.

His breaths were slow, she could hear them relaxed in slumber and smiled because for once he wasn't snoring, but then there was a crash, and her shin would likely bruise from whatever the bleeding hell that was, and "Ah!" he shouted, seeing two eyes bright in the dark. He'd bolted up from his bed just to fall off the edge, his legs kicking where he was caught and twisted in the blankets.

"Gendry!" she whisper-shouted, stepping around.. a trunk? Until she was at her knees by his head. "It's me! I didn't mean to knock whatever that was over, I was just trying to get.. here," she trailed off, squinting her eyes at his shadowed face to see him properly. "Gendry?"

He only groaned, slowly kicking his legs where he was caught and twisted in the blankets. "Ouch," he muttered, feeling her loose curls brush over his cheek.

"Gendry," she repeated, and it was the tone she used when she thought he was being stupid.

"You could have just climbed into bed," he started, sounding half awake and trying to slip away from the lull of sleep, "you didn' have to do all of those loud things."

"Gendry."

"Arya," he said, and something in him seemed to snap awake, alert. It was lighter now, eyes adjusting in the dim shadows, and he softened, reaching out to cup her cheek. "Couldn't sleep?" Because he wasn't going to ask about her nightmares, but he knew as quiet as she was, she wasn't as silent as she would be those nights.

"No. Or yes, I mean, you're -- that's my nose."

She laughed, and he didn't expect to hear that before daybreak, and slowly, he let his rough fingertips drift just a breath lower until he felt her lips soft against his skin. "And here?"

"Me," she whispered, grinning when she heard his breath catch when she kissed the tips of his fingers. "I wanted to see you."

"Couldn't wait 'till morning?"

"Do you want me to?"

"No," and she's curling around him as he says it, curving beneath his arm on the warm, hard floor. "There is a bed right there."

"Gendry?"

"Arya."

She could have teased him about being so quick to get her into his bed figuratively, or maybe offered a jape about not needing a bed, but she fit curved on her side to him like this, her arm finding its own way to his chest when he drew her closer to him, and between his sleepy breaths, resting against the sturdy plane of his shoulder, protectively held in both his arms, she couldn't say anything light. Not when this was so warm, when it felt so natural and _good_ and of the stories that should be told. The tales with the happy endings, the problems within, the doubt and the guilt and the unsureness bedfellowing the quiet moments of calm where there isn't anything dark casting over them like the night sky bright with stars somewhere above the clouds.

"Robb might have started a war to marry the lowborn girl he loved," she said slowly, quietly to the night and the prolonged breath she heard him take.

The words might have meant anything, everything, because connotations, assumptions, the truths of the words and the horror of how that story ended, the hope of being the exception, the chancely fated couple of ghosts and something predestined, because they're here, aren't they?

"Arya," he said, and nothing else for moments that stretched like the morning warily coming for them. "We aren't starting a war," even if it happened the last time of different names, a likeness of faces.

"But it's happened, the marriage of a highborn and a lowborn all proper. They'd have been here to meet you if the world hadn't gone to hells."

He can tell she doesn't like the words when they curl out of her mouth, onto his chest, but she's right, and she never really wanted marriage. A husband. Seasons do change, leaves blowing over the horizon, skies lightening to the luminous tendril fingers of the sun etching lightness into the world, into their conversation.

"Tomorrow," he told her, and she'd gone quiet, gone to sleep and a restful slumber of her loud snores.

Until his loud snores woke her to a fit of good-naturedness, and "Gendry," she woke him softly, squeezing her arm around his ribs instead of hitting him. "Gendry, wake up."

Life had started to warm outside, whispers, the songs of a bird chirping, the howl of a wolf, and he kissed her cheek tenderly, lazily, watching her go from the warm, hard floor with the bed right there.

The cold bit at her cheeks as soon as she opened the door to the forge, and it didn't matter what anyone would think at seeing her leave there early in the morning, this morning, now; all that mattered outside of it were in the crypts, and that's where her feet carried her, foot-tracks already lining the snow.

"No need to wait," she calls from inside, to Rickon, following the lights of the candles brighten the dim passages she heard their laughter echoing on, because they're all caught up together now. "I'm here." She sits next to Jon, looking to Sansa, and she would be married today. She's smiling, all of them so quiet and glancing to each other in a soft way they can't touch, and this, _this_ is home, this is what Robb fought for, this is what Father should have lived to see. "Mother would have started crying the moment the first words of the ceremony were spoken," she says to break their silence, and Sansa's giggling like a girl again while Rick turns his gaze to her in a memory of his mum, and Jon hugs his arm around her.

But his eyes are red later. The weak bastard he is, crying in the snow in the Godswood, handing off Sansa to one of the few men he'd ever deem worthy enough of something so fragile, so strong, as his sister.

The skies are still grey, a perfect grey rolling and continuing on in its stretch miles and miles, and Arya watched it from Sansa's chamber's window as they readied for the event that would prove to be life-changing in just the simple ways, and she doesn't know why she's taking a brush to fiery red hair before she can help it.

"You're beautiful," she said, though she always knew it. It wasn't the buttercream white silks silhouetting her flawlessly, however, nor the wintery skin without blemish to her perfect, shining face. It was the happiness she saw resting there, the awe and wonder that had missing for years, and Sansa was beautiful.

Love still looked good on her, and love wasn't something to fall in gradually, it was just a trip and a skip bursting at random, wasn't it? Soft and timid like the petals of a rose before their beauty opened, before letters slowly started to write more familiarly, more homely, 'till the parchments found their own and everything Margaery spoke about Willas Tyrell and his goodness proved to be genuine and well-deserved.

True, and it was different than the good righteousness everyone said Joffrey possessed at first. Roses weren't lions, but no one could say still that teeth were sharper than thorns.

"You are," Sansa smiled, warm and soft and something she still doesn't know how they came to. She gestured her to sit beside her on the tapered stool, and side by side, curled brown hair brushing lightly against styled, perfect red, she drew her arms against Arya.

"Sansa," she groans in protest since she always had, listening to the familiar lull of Sansa's exasperated sigh. She sounded like she were laughing, too, though, and Arya tried to shove at her arms like she used to when Robb laughed at her like that, like she was something funny but he loved her anyways. "You'll suffocate me in this shift, and I'll be unconscious and there'll be no one to snicker during your vows," she threatened, a grin pulling at her mouth.

"You don't still think it's silly, I know," Sansa informed her. She might have rolled her eyes if they weren't closed, Sansa, when Arya snorted into her red hair. "I know you still think I'm silly for years ago, but _now_ , I think you understand."

"How to perfectly coil your hair?"

Sansa sighs again, and a maid told her from the door that she best be hurrying if she doesn't want to be late for her own wedding.

"Marriage," she says, and absently, she took a Stark grey ribbon off her vanity, began threading it through her sister's hair. "He looks at you."

"Gendry?" She knew he did, but she didn't know what to say, what not to say -- this was still Sansa's day, and she could feel her cheeks start to burn involuntarily, tugging at the fur on her sleeves.

"You don't laugh at him for looking at you like that, and if it were anyone else, you would."

And really, as much as her soft tone is right and as much as she doesn't want to see her sister walk down the aisle forever, she does because her sweet, silly sister deserves this, and they really need to be moving. "You think I can't wed him," so she says, prepared to fight this disagreement with fire, ready to use Sansa's defense to get her walking out the door.

She stands, smooths the pleats of her light-dark grey silk gown in impatience and propriety, holding out her hand for Sansa to take, but she's just as immovable as her own stubbornness, serene and confused as she studies her face in the looking glass. "..Why do you think that?"

"Because," Arya shrugs, and all of her fire moments ago faded. "Wouldn't you be against me marrying anyone that isn't highborn?"

"But you don't care about that."

Confusion settles over both of them, and seven hells, they don't have time for this. "You do."

"No," and it's a simple answer, spoken sweetly like Sansa's tasting lemoncakes made thanks to the crates of lemons Willas brought with him, and she'd very much like to tell Arya that being baseborn mattered little when she once thought the world in and of all the knights in their honor and integrity and goodness just to find out cruelly none of them were true, just like the highborn lords she all thought to be as good as Father, just to turn scheming and vindictive and evil and bad, that this baseborn blacksmith bastard was more great a man than most.

But mayhaps she quite liked that look of confusion riddling Arya's face in place of the usual snarkiness, and some things didn't need to be said, all frayed hems and worn stitches.

"..You don't?" she only asked dumbly, looking to Sansa's secret smile as it was hidden by the sheath of the sheer veil she draped over her. "You were the one supposed to wed a Baratheon, though," though, some things they didn't speak of, Sansa suddenly frozen in her grace as she stood.

"King Robert?" But it wasn't a question, and oh, gods. She doesn't know what to say, what can she say, because damned Littlefinger told her stories like Father did of Robert, Rhaegar, Lyanna. Something so naïve and childish she once thought to be unrequited and true love, just to have its new tale even truer and endestined in the flesh in front of her. "You're as beautiful as they say Lyanna was," she finally murmured, looping her arm through her sister's.

"And you're prettier," because maybe she's starting to hate the name left to her by the ghost, maybe her heart's starting to swell in a tide of overlapping love and affection and content for her sister. Gods damn it all, she wasn't going to cry during the wedding. "We're missing it, you know."

"It can't begin without me."

"Willas might worry you're having second thoughts."

"And I shall tell him my sister was more important, and he will exhibit his fine gentlemanly qualities in understanding he has sisters, too."

She sounded coy, _happy_ , and Arya laughed, starting to mock the tone Rickon initially took in annoyance. "'Tis a good match, truly."

And it was.

Though he was waiting alone in the snow, too anxious in his excitement to properly feel the cold his Southron blood wasn't warmed to beneath the trees, beyond the North, Willas Tyrell stood taller than any man with a busted leg might have.

He waited, knowing she'd join him when she was ready, and while he heard the whispering of the leaves as just the biting chill of the wind catching in the branches, he knew this was a holy, sacred place he'd miss the solace of in Highgarden. Growing strong, but growing old, together, closer, slowly.

Jon gave him a solemn nod from where he sat on the wooden benches, Margaery was already sniffling from the opposite pew, and the few others seemed nearly nervous -- Shireen of the House Baratheon, tilting her head towards Rickon to catch whatever he was telling her in the quiet of the wind, Gendry sitting stoically off to the side of Jon, Baratheon blue eyes straining to see something in the face of a tree, Tyrion Lannister near the back of the three rows, waiting, waiting, praying to all the confounded gods Sansa wouldn't bind herself out of another marriage.

There were other faces, not all of them seen as whispers chanted the words that rode the wind, shaded over them beneath the fading sky, and there -- two figures, flame hair bright against the snow and the bleary colors of the trees, Stark grey at home in the Godswood, approaching those gathered.

And while Sansa knew who would be attending, she didn't _know_ with her eyes only on Willas, his steadfast, besotted smile her turncloak in the ways people change, the ways seasons do, and he never doubted for a moment, can't take his eyes away from his Sansa walking towards him.

She's beautiful. Creamy white silks tapering her waist, draping against her elegantly like she was one of the first beautiful Northern creatures to emerge like a maiden of ice, a damsel in the snow, the Queen of the North, radiant with her veil blowing in the whispers gushing their praise like they sang the night before.

Maybe it was Bran, maybe it was perfect, Arya looking to Jon because she doesn't want to see Gendry look to Sansa like she's the most beautiful sight a man could ever see, though -- he is staring to her, and only the leaves can see his slackened jaw and his wide eyes frozen on Arya while all look to Sansa.

"I'm giving her to you," Arya says loudly, informative and no-nonsense and really not knowing the words to officiate this wedding, but Willas breaks his gaze with Sansa to smile at her. His betrothed made sure he knew all the lines.

"Who comes before the god?" Nevermind that the lines are all out of order in timing and speakers, Sansa beams beneath her veil, cast in the light skimming through the lace and brightening this day's perfection in her eyes.

"Me, Sansa of House Stark, comes here to be wed." Her voice is already cracking, and she clutches her sister's arm to keep standing, reaches for Willas's hand with her left, and oh, gods, she can hear the voices, doesn't see Rickon look up to the sky from behind her. "I come to beg the blessings of the gods."

"And me," Willas interrupts, his eyes burning just as red as his sister's must be with how she's sniffling. "Willas of House Tyrell, heir of it. I.. claim her," he says, a quizzical look crossing his face blending to a smile, because he doesn't want to claim her for those connotations when she's forgotten her veil and looks to him like this wedding is the right one. That he is. "Who gives her?"

"I do," Arya says loudly, but Jon stood as he said it, too, and Rickon's husk of a voice spoke in turn as well, the three tones up into the air, a raven quorking high up into the trees. Bran.

"I take this man," Sansa spoke, her smile brighter in the casual set of the wedding, warm in the cloak Willas gently placed around her shoulders.

"Father," Willas says, "smith. Warrior, Mother, Maiden. Stranger, Crone."

"I am his."

"..and she is mine, from this day."

"..till the end of my days."

And he would have kneeled beside her when her creamy gown kissed the snow in front of the heart tree if not for his leg, but her hand's still tight through his, and as genuine and untraditional as the eager words skipping entire lines in the sacred ceremony was, a chill of wind whisks through the leaves, cold through Arya's hair, and Jon's eyes are still red while he's thinking if he'd have given Sansa to Willas like he was supposed to, their sweet sister might have had the perfection she once sought like fresh blanketed snow, but growing strong, growing up -- they had. They all had.

Margaery moves past Ned Dayne to rush and trip through the earth so she's embracing her brother and her good-sister, and Shireen laughs like the light wind, giddy as Rickon offers her arm, comes to stand besides Jon. He's saying something to Gendry but all she can hear is the utter glee condemning Sansa back a decade ago in her happiness, and he's looking at her when she looks back to him standing in the snow, his paling skin nearly translucent, visceral, gleaming like his blinding grin of countless feelings all at once understood by her.

Tyrion says something about a feast, making Sansa laugh and agree with her dear friend, so towards the dining halls, their gathering treks, through snow, under sky, out of the trees that should be shouting their secrets and their approval when the new bride and groom lead their procession like the last Lord and Lady of Winterfell once had, again now, where things are simple and easy all over again.

She's still standing in front of the weirwood, holding Sansa's veil because she passed it off to her in a fit of her happy giggles, and she traces the stitches of the lace, slides her fingers over the pearls, watches the face in the tree seem to take shape, smiling beneath its tears like all of them seem to be so prone to now. So blessed, and gods be good, the gods are good, and death doesn't seem to be the name of him any longer.

"Lady Arya," she hears, and she looks to where Gendry's waiting for her just down the path, only he'd never call her so unless amusement and irritation were taking hold of his face. "I'd like to apologize, if you'd allow me."

It's Ned Dayne, purple eyes in all this snow, and her eyes move over his shoulder towards Gendry. His fists look as if they're clenching, and jealousy must be attractive on him, but Edric was always clueless.

"You should, Lord Dayne," she tells him, folding her arms over her chest.

"I might blame it on the wine, but that'd be untoward."

"Men have tried worse."

"My lady," and Arya had to smile at the past, "would you listen were I to make you an offer?"

She's silent just long enough to hear the break in the trees before she can fill it again. "I don't think so," she said quietly, wondering if Gendry's in earshot.

"There is a different type of freedom that comes with matrimony, though."

"Freedom? In being captured?" She's partially teasing, arching both her brows in the cold, and he's too cheery to be disheartened.

"Love, then?"

And she wants to tell him how she doesn't believe in love, but she can't anymore, can she? A smile's threatening her mouth though Gendry's turned yards away from them, and "No," she says, just like the present when it was the past, "I'm sorry. You can try again, though, if you'd like."

He shakes his ashed hair with a laugh she remembered, not unkind. "You've refused my hand twice."

"Three times."

"Three times," he repeats, sighing to himself before he smiled. Coughed. "I suppose that's it, then?"

"Winterfell's always open to you, Ned," she tells him. And she feels lighter somehow, still hugging both her arms to her chest.

He bows his head politely, gives her a last smile before he turns to leave. "Arya?"

"Yes, Ned?"

"That man last night," he says, confused and straining to remember. "He reminded me of.. well, nevermind."

She knows, but he does to, and it's not a ghost when he walks passed Gendry, glances back to Arya. Of course. His smile's easy as he walks back to the keep of Winterfell, the leaves loud again, everything eerie in the night.

"You look upset," and Gendry bristles when she touches his arm, frowns severely at nothing.

"What'd he want?"

"My hand in marriage," she says like she's jesting, and his blue eyes flash to hers, skies and dry ice.

"You're spoken for," he grits out with a huff, and she likes this Gendry, quite happens to fancy how he'll think of her as his when she's no man's and his doubt's are forgotten with that.

"Yours."

It's different, not the same as belonging but opposed to anything else she could be in the face of anything, faceless, nameless, his for just a few moments is sparking feeling down her spine, coloring her world to the grey of the dusk that's billowing in, rolling away, coating the skies in the natural state of darkness accented by the light of stars in the cosmos, burning and fuming and blazing and shooting for home.

"Sansa knows," she tells him, seeing him soften beneath her hand to his face, her cold fingers to his skin. "I hope she's here when it happens."

He shivers when a gust of wind brushed past them, whipping at her skirts, and he moved closer to her to stave off the chill. "When what happens?"

"When we -- you never asked me." Because yes, for never intending to marry, she at least wanted to be asked all proper like, turning her face up to frown at him with all the bite of the summer cold.

And oh, he couldn't help himself, biting on his tongue to suppress his stupid smile. "Asked you what?"

"The question, stupid." Even sweet Ned Dayne had indirectly asked, though the Godswood didn't take to it like the branches bowed for them just last night.

Taking her arm, he cocked a brow, guiding her down the path of snow and footsteps and his own entertainment:  justice to how she riddled him with jealousy, the easy liberty that came with love. "Which question's that?"

" _The_ question," she repeated, rolling her eyes when he scuffed his boot on a patch of the dry earth like the Southron boy he tried to forget in the cold. "Will you marry me, would you do me the honor of accepting my hand, I'd be inclined to wed you with the pretense of an alliance, if you're agreeing, while the truth in the matter rests in gold I need and wine that needs to be stored and lands that need to be filled with the smallfolk that'll rejoice in thinking there'll never be a truer love, and --"

"Of course I will," he interrupts her, his eyes sparkling with how clever he knows he is.

She stopped to spare at him from her mocking of betrothals, confused until she understood his arm slipping around her waist. "..You're so stupid," she muttered, but his laugh touched his eyes, reached her heart, and he walked her the rest of the way to the keep in comfort and leisure.

They feast, they drink, all the guests and bannermen and guards and castle hold alike, trading tales and sharing laughs, breathing the easy air that tastes like the ice of a thaw, the promise of heat and warmth and a peace casting over them like dusk and night and the morning with it.

It's a new start in Winterfell, and when the morning comes and Jon kneels before Willas, Margaery coyly kisses Jon's cheek as his new good-sister, Willas ensures Gendry's left a sealed letter bearing the stamp of House Tyrell, Sansa's hugging Rickon and sorting through his mess of unruly hair like she tufts through Ghost's fur, Arya embraces Sansa.

Dawn rolls in, rolls away, grey skies billowing in the streaks of the bright sun pouring through the clouds, lingering and coloring the leaves of the trees, sparking a touch of life on such divine a day, it's gone just as swiftly as it came.

The carriage and their precession leave for Highgarden after many ready good-byes, one Tyrell leaving more Stark though she's always been a flower, and when the wolves in Winterfell start to howl, it's the worn path to the forge she finds herself wandering on.

He's working on something, but he always knows she's there, and she didn't cry during the wedding like she feared, but she's crying now.


	15. Am I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He only rolled his eyes, too in love with the angry tone of her voice to care about the words, like when she called him stupid with that smile and shake of her head or look of disgust causing him to fall for her all over again, and he tugged his blankets looser around him. "M'lady," he muttered back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for Direwolf86, because have you guys talk to this person? The best person in the world? She is my love, and our threads could be our own books, just saying.
> 
> And loves, I know this chapter is way short, but spending half the day in the ER with a long (lame) story and stitches in my cheek makes for a short chapter I needed to write for happiness and therapy and fluff and grammar that might not make sense because pain meds and tiredness, but I hope it's still okay! New chapter soon, longer and lovelier, but I love you guys. xoxo All my well wishes to you all; send me yours, too!
> 
> P.S. Direwolf86

"Arya," he says. Sighs, really. Low and dreamy in his gruff rasp, his arm instinctively curling around the warmth of her against him. He can feel her ribs as she yawns, the indents of her shoulders at his chest, the press of her backside against him where -- no, no, she had to move. "Arya," he repeats, and the times he wouldn't say her highborn name aloud are strange and foreign when the sound of her rolling off his tongue is hardening him against her. "Wake up."

She yawns again, curling more against him, and he remembers a glimpse of his dreams now. More than her rump moving against him, _his_ name soft in the way it rolls off her tongue and into his, and no, "No," she grumbled stubbornly.

"Yes," he hissed, because her hips moving back against him wrapped heat around the parts of him she'd start to feel pressing at her, and no, _no_ , arousal and the quiet (loud) part of his brain absent to why he shouldn't take her now weren't going to best him.

She screeched when he shoved her off the bed -- he hadn't meant to nudge her that hard -- and reached at her shin where a knife was kept in the boots she wasn't wearing. "You bastard!" she shouted, springing up to her feet all wild hair and piercing dry ice eyes in the glint of the dark.

He only rolled his eyes, too in love with the angry tone of her voice to care about the words, like when she called him stupid with that smile and shake of her head or look of disgust causing him to fall for her all over again, and he tugged his blankets looser around him. "M'lady," he muttered back.

Tenderly, always softly 'less he was angry, 'less he was banning the heated thoughts of her quivering beneath him with his name for her etched into her thighs with his teeth, but she glowered like he spit out an insult. "Stupid."

"Darling."

He was a fool of a Waters (a Baratheon), but Winterfell had been quiet the three days since Sansa left for Highgarden, one day since Winterfell presumed their youngest lady a ruined maid.

A happy one, though, because fuck the Southron lords, the cruel men that'd sooner see the North in the chains of the politics Lord Stark tried to oppose in lieu of the free reign of ruling wolves and the stag with broken antlers.

Not that they knew.

There was always worse company to keep, anyways, yet -- they couldn't jest about the Targaryens since Jon was a wolf with fire in his breath.

And it'd been two middling days since Gendry approached Jon like he said he would, his nervousness forgotten with his courage standing next to him with an impatient elbow in his ribs, his resolve strengthened with the chaste kiss pressed to his cheek: icy cold and _"we'll just be outlaws if he doesn't like it."_

She'd like that, he thought, like Wenda the White Fawn like she once told him, like the songs Tom would sing just to make the little lady smile. No featherbeds for her when jauntier japes about bears and honeyed hair that wasn't on a maiden's head had to be explained by his red-face and stuttering words to her.

"I know why you're here," Jon had told him. It was almost like something scripted, automatic, planned in his head as he stressed over his appropriate, correct statements to answer with. Anything to be deserving enough of her. "Why?"

But it could work, couldn't it? When men were vying for Sansa's hand, when she could have chosen to wed a Stark bannermen instead of an eligible lord, it could have been done.

..If he was a bannermen and not the keep's blacksmith.

"She won't ever wear fine silks with me as her husband," he finally told him, watching Jon's face remain impassive. Those didn't matter to Arya, obviously, but they mattered to dirty, callused fingers that appreciated the value of everything costly they had the privilege of touching. It needed to be said again, he thought. "She won't be too well-to-do."

"She doesn't care for that," he had reminded him. He looked old. "There are other ways to provide," but he knew that, and this was so terse, and the skies were storming beyond the window.

"I love her," he said, and he prayed the quick tightening around Jon's eyes was brotherly affection. "I have for years."

Softer this time, tender in honesty, and Lord Stark only stared, intent on the eye contact habit was demanding Gendry break in submission.

But he didn't, and he knew what he gestured for when fine fur gloves reached out. He unfolded the parchment given to him by Lord Tyrell, seal unopened, and gave it to Jon when he asked if he may.

And he skimmed, and pale skin froze even paler, and those scripted words could have said anything. All he knew was the man telling him he'd talk to Arya, ascertain her wishes for himself, that he was a good man, that stags turn wolves, too.

Shireen was still here somewhere, likely the Godswood with Rickon.

"Soon," he told him. Soon.

So "Darling," he repeated now, and he saw how her arms' silhouettes dropped in the dark, imagined the conflicted furrow of her brow with the pleasant curl of her mouth.

"Don't call me that."

"Darling," but softer, his smile threatening his mouth, his arms reaching out to her when moments prior forbade his body from nearing her.

She sighed, "Gendry," and he could hear the roll of her eyes as the limp mattress sagged beneath her weight. Her breath was cool to his face, and with inches between them, his blanket a barrier, she sighed again when he pushed her dark hair from her eyes, her reserves nonexistent here.

He wasn't a salve to the hurts taken to her overtime, but with her breaths still easier around him and her hands pulling for him without a thought wasted on the dark surrounding them, it was yes, yes. "Stupid," she mumbled, because she could. "Stubborn."

He kissed her lightly, so soft he couldn't rave or throb, and maybe they could just be outlaws. Forget the rest of Westeros, leave the responsibility to those that want it -- without thinking Jon doesn't since they won't stop if they do -- without a care or a plan or a silver stagged coin. They could do it.

He would for her, a tiny hovel inside a forest, a pond paces and paces away through the trees, just enough meat and potatoes to survive, a love that'd keep them going. Wouldn't that be just like the songs?

"No," she murmured, and he didn't know if he'd spoken aloud.

Her fingers were soft over his beard, and it didn't matter. Jon called for Arya that night.


	16. When We Were Not Misunderstood

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Everywhere," she said, but she was grinning now. "Can we?"
> 
> "If you want," he answered, his hand reaching out for hers before he stopped it.

He doesn't yet know what Arya told Jon or what the Lord Stark told his m'lady high.

But she'd smile in a slow, small way at random, a slight lift of her pink lips curling happily in some thought she snapped at Gendry for asking about, and he kissed her for it once. In the kitchens.

It might have been the low summer sun illuminating and melting the snow glimmering white outside, sparkling like the silver flecks in her eyes, or it might have been how pretty she looked when she yawned with a sleepy crease of a crinkled sheet imprinted to her cheek. Tangles of her dark locks slipping past the piece of leather cording that binded her hair, all mussed and unruly and --

He wasn't a poet, but there was something that should be of a song in the way she found her way straight to his side with an elbow at his ribs to nudge him over.

Her fingers were instantly at his plate for the slices of cold ham that made part of his breakfast, and as the keep's cook shouted about eggs, he smiled. "Good morning."

"Terrible morning," she contradicted, reaching over his arm for his mug. But she grinned, her brows a smirk as she said it, her nose crinkling when he leaned forward with a quick, featherlight kiss to her mouth.

"Better?" And it was; he couldn't help himself. While he looked around for any judgmental eyes, her smile brightened like she swallowed two suns glistening outside the open shutters, softened when her small hands squeezed his arm.

"I have things to do today, but I'll find you after?"

"'Course, I'll be looking over some plans with Lord Stark --"

"Jon."

"-- about repairs and rebuilding."

After two seconds of consideration, the cook still shouting about eggs and the lazy kitchen wenches, she told him that was boring.

He didn't think to ask her why Jon was called Stark instead of Targaryen, though, he watched her disappear with steps so quick she might not have even sat down with him.

\- -- - -- -

"I called you here so we could talk about choices," Jon told him.

He blinked, his soot-stained hands still extended with yesterday's plans and schematics. "M'lord?"

 _Milord_ , Jon thought, but not if their positions might have been reversed in a different time. "You can call me Jon, Gendry," he said instead, quiet as he moved to close the door to his study. "Please sit."

"This is about..?"

"You didn't read it, did you? Lord Tyrell's letter."

"No, m--Jon. I figured it wouldn't change anything," he said. And that's when it first sounded lame to even his own ears: impossible and wishful thinking. "I mean," he recovered, looking sheepish, "it doesn't matter when I'm still named a bastard."

"Except we could ask the Dragon Queen to legitimize you."

"But would she? M'lord -- Jon -- I know the realm favored King Baratheon a better ruler than the Mad King, but they called him the Usurper all the same. The smallfolk wanted the Dragon Queen as their ruler 'till they found discontent again. She didn't want a King in the North, she won't want anyone else threatening her reign."

"You know you could be King, then?"

"Couldn't," he interrupted with a loud laugh. It didn't sound kind when this all seemed like a cruel joke, but Jon smiled despite himself, too.

"Some would say you're the rightful King of Westeros."

"Couldn't they say the same about you?"

He almost regretted the words as soon as he brazenly said them, but before he could apologize for speaking out of turn, Jon continued. "They might. When Queen Daenerys propositioned a wedding to strengthen her claim over all the Kingdom, I did refuse."

"Jon, I -- begging your pardons, but I don't think Arya told me the truth of why."

It took him a moment before answering, a turn of quiet and thinking creasing Jon's brows. He didn't want to marry Dany, for a start. She was beautiful, surely, but his aunt as well. And something in her smirk seemed too devious.

No, he couldn't marry the Dragon Queen and sign over the North after he fought for it, after Robb and Lady Catelyn died for it. Even if dead didn't stay dead.

At least Lady Stoneheart's eyes were vaguely Tully blue the few times he'd seen them, not a frozen, icy, piercing blue bright in the dark, light dregs of winter.

"I didn't want to," he finally settled on saying with another tight smile. "Dragons don't belong in the North, do they?"

"Neither do stags, I reckon," but there they both were.

"Lady Shireen Baratheon seems to take to it. Your cousin. Have you spoken to her?"

"Nothing beyond polite courtesies, no," Gendry said, sounding sheepish again. "She seems fond of Rickon. He started talking again when she arrived."

"More than that," Jon nodded, but coping mechanisms were strange. "In a couple years, he might wed her."

"And rule Winterfell?"

"Aye."

Leaning back in his chair, Gendry rubbed at his bearded jaw. "He'll take to it if he's anything like you."

No. "Like Robb," Jon conceded, but oh, that was a subject painful to dwell on. "And that would leave no one at Storm's End."

"Except for.. Edric? Baratheon, aye," he frowned.

"Edric Storm, first."

And really, if Gendry could bend the knee to bastard-turned-lords with all the respect he would swear off deserving himself, then he was just as stupid as Arya said. It made all the difference to solemn frowns and creased brows.

"But if," Jon continued, leaning forward to rest his arms atop his desk, "you wished it, Storm's End is rightfully yours."

Maybe Westeros, too, but seven hells, not before noon.

"I never wanted a lordship. Even after being told my father might be a Baratheon, I never figured that to mean a castle."

"And fortune. Lands, titles, a name." And the irony. "You could likely wed whoever you wanted, though I imagine some would place a target on a King's lost bastard."

"Would that be the only way?" he interrupted. To marry Arya, to be deserving of her in the eyes of any who didn't see integrity as enough. To have everything he didn't want with the only thing he did. Life wasn't fair, truly. Not as a bastard.

"No," Jon said after a moment, raising his eyes. He was almost smiling. "It wouldn't."

\- -- - -- -

"There's a new letter from Sansa," Arya murmured, and he had to strain to hear over the ringing metals in the forge.

Common smithing work today: repairs and various works adjusting balances and edges and he shouted to be heard. "A new letter? She's been gone not five days!"

"She has a lot to say, I suppose. She likes being married."

"Most women seem to," he agreed, working to count how behind in his work he'd be if he stopped for just a little while. But when he set down the blade he was fixing, he had to work out why she was smirking like that.

"And most women are stupid."

"You can't call everyone stupid, Arya."

"Yes, I can," and even her slight snobbery made her that much more perfect.

Reaching for a mostly clean rag, he wiped off his hands and his forehead, staining the cloth black. But that was when he got his first good look at her that afternoon as she stood there looking over the various wares lining the shelves. A hand to straighten her brown skirt, another hand to brush against her forehead. Beautiful, until she scowled.

"Why're you making that face?"

"Have you fought in many battles?" she asked him, turning with a helmet in her hands, the iron warm to touch.

"You know I haven't," he smiled, trying to dwell on anything besides her eyes on him as he untied the cords of his leather apron.

"Let me," she insisted, and he didn't object when she came behind him to work at the tied knots, though his skin was starting to burn.

But her small hands ghosting along his shoulderblades was better than thinking of battles and wars and one of the possibilities Jon thought, a member of the Queensguard to earn her trust and favor if she didn't grant him his legitimacy.

Or at least, it was better and distracting until her fingers skimmed lower, her soft fingertips prying the leather tie loose at his hips, and she was too close, the smithy too warm.

"I think you got it," he said, clearing his throat and shaking his head with tense shoulders rigid beneath her hands.

"Why are you so.. impossible?" He could hear her frown and picture the pouted purse of her lips.

Impossible? "Cautious?" he tried. "Kind? Intent on not bringing m'lady dishonor?"

"That's what I said. Impossible."

He couldn't help but grin until her hands skimmed upward at his spine, spanning his muscled skin and folding at his shoulders. "You don't have to," he started, before a heavy exhale left him when her fingers began massaging into his back.

"You're so tall. And big. You need to relax."

"I can't when you're -- don't," he groaned, but the roll of his shoulders under her soothing hands had the day's (six years') stress melting off of him.

"Don't what?" she whispered, and oh, he was pliable to her, his head lulling downwards with another heavy sigh.

 _Don't keep doing that_ , he should have said, her knuckles following the ridge of his spine, her thumbs pressing to the divets dimpling the small of his back. But he didn't, and his shoulders sagged in all their eased weight when she repeated herself again with her words soft and something tender between his shoulder blades.

"Don't stop," he muttered instead, his eyes closed to the warm intimacy that was her lips against his skin in an instant, her hands at the belt of his trousers to turn him towards her. "Arya," low, primal, and because he was a fool for her, terrible at keeping his word (like a lord), he kissed her.

He seared his lips against her with a kiss, left his soot-smudged fingerprints to stain at her cheek before he fisted his hand in her hair. 

Her mouth was open, and he could taste the noise that caught in her throat with his tongue as they crashed together. Her hands burned whatever part of him she could touch, his arms, his back, his chest, his heart; his free hand wrapping around her waist to hold her hips flesh to his with --

He flinched away from her when the door to the smithy opened.

\- -- - -- -

"He's a bastard," Jon was telling her.

But because she was Arya, because her brain (heart) fastened its defenses before she could let herself hear what else he was saying -- that it didn't matter -- she was abrasive anger and fierce words, all the emotions she pretended not to have.

"And you!" she shouted. 

He called after her as she stormed out of his study, because she never listened, never learned, but he smiled anyways.

\- -- - -- -

"We could do it," she told him, and Gendry smiled at her, knew he couldn't refuse if she really did ask.

"You'd miss your family, though," because running away really only sounds wondrous when all's done is talk about it.

"I didn't know if I wanted to stay here when I came back."

"Do you?"

"I think I want other things," and it's not really an answer, he thinks, but she's smiling with closed lips, a faraway look in her eyes.

"You'd rather be in Braavos?"

"Everywhere," she said, but she was grinning now. "Can we?"

"If you want," he answered, his hand reaching out for hers before he stopped it.

\- -- - -- -

It's a shot in the dark, two adults playing like pretend and running away.

"No responsibilities," she said, giving him a small trunk of the few possessions she brought with her. "No kingdom, no one expecting anything of us."

It's a great idea, really, one he can feel warm in his chest like the rest of their life, and since the snow's melted and the night sky dark without any stars, it's the perfect time.

They didn't think of saddling horses; they just walk and walk, and with a turn in a forest _just like happier times_ , she tells him as he rolls his eyes, Winterfell is long behind them.

..Or just behind them, the forest they're dizzy walking through is the Godswood, but they've run away to this deep cavern of sanctuary in weirwood trees, and two adults playing pretend, two lovers moving deeper and deeper with lighter hearts and fingers that find each other's in the dark.

\- -- - -- -

When the sun rises and they're canopied by trees, he awakes to her a few paces away, the sword he forged for her in her hands as she practices with it the water dancing she perfected years ago.

He doesn't realize how much he missed seeing that until he tells her so and she laughs, presses up against him when he pins her to the dry earth beneath them. 

She tells him how clever she is, that they could stay here with the trees and the winds and the gods forever, and he kisses her against the grass.

It's not like he has all of Westeros in one hand with her heart in the other, but when she skips a stone into the lake and calls him stupid, they don't need to be like a song.

Just real and flesh, "Skin," she mumbles against his lips later that night, wanting to feel more of him before he stops them, duty and justice and honor-bound.

\- -- - -- -

The next morning, running away without going anywhere is just as great as it's ever been, and after they break into a cold loaf of bread with cheese and grapes, she teaches him how to braid her hair.

"If you can sew, you can pleat," but he's gods-awful at it.

"It looks nice," he lies with that rugged grin that melted her just a little bit.

A raven sings above them, and nothing could be more lovely than this, and a lone white direwolf spies at their laughter before padding off.

"They say it has healing powers, the lake."

"Do you believe that?"

"Do you?" she asks back, making quick work of tugging off her boots.

"..Arya," he starts dumbly. "That water is likely frozen."

"So?" she challenges. She doesn't say anything about his weak Southron blood, but the unimpressed arch of her brow, the curl of her smirk -- he takes the bite for what it is and shouts when the first sting of cold water hits his bare toes.

"Too cold!" he bravely shouts, gaping at her when he sees her standing in the lake up to her knees. "Arya, you'll get frostbite!"

But while he'd love her with or without toes, he could still throttle her. He manfully shrieked when she kicked a splash of water at him.

"It sounds like you're howling!" she laughs, and without a thought, she cups her hands to her mouth and howls like she really was the She-Wolf of the North.

"What are you doing?" 

"Howling! You do it," she demands in the tone that isn't a suggestion, howling once more for good measure.

When she quiets and a wolf -- Shaggy, if she's right -- howls morosely from the distance, it's then when she laughs and laughs that he cups his hands to his mouth, too, giving his best impression of a direwolf's howl.

And then the daylight's full of them, and feeling ridiculous, feeling like he's soaring at the edge of the world, he howls with her, and she thinks he'd make a better Stark than Baratheon.


	17. Losers Love to Cling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I think so. It was different, though, wasn't it? Not all passion, but something more innocent."
> 
> "We were for an instant or two. Maybe for the first day."

The third day that they've run away and hidden themselves in the Godswood with moments of comfortable, prolonged silences to loud, pealing laughter sailing up to whistle through the leaves, it's like they've found their peace.

She wants to think it could have been a lot like this if she hadn't run away from the Brotherhood, but she doesn't want to think that's wishful thinking. If that had changed, what else could have? Maybe things that wouldn't make now as good, though she would have had a room somewhere, maybe, a tent at the least, but she can't feel too much of the cold.

They would have been somewhere out in the forest where they could light the fires he wouldn't out of respect for her gods -- strange, since his god could have been the fire, but details, details, she turns over the parchment in her hands to read the underside.

And he stirs from a few paces away, shifting on the hard ground with a lazy blanket curled around him. He's been watching her that morning, but she knew that. "We were running away to the see the world," he says slowly, because pfft, they really were going to, all of her truth goes to him when she can't manage it even for herself sometimes, "and you bring that?"

"If I don't at least pretend to keep up with most of the sums, Jon's going to think I'm irresponsible." Or just childish and stubborn and refusing to listen to anything he says, something that almost made her felt bad before her defensives shrugged it away like Gendry shrugged off the warm woolen blanket, drawing up one of his knees.

"So if we actually run off," he starts again with a short, ponderous frown that makes her smile when she sees, "and you'd mayhaps not see your brother for.. however long it takes to get to Dorne or where the Wall was or Essos or wherever else you wanted to go, you'd still want to be doing the number keeping? Don't you only have the recent ones?"

"No, I have -- well, yes, but Gendry?"

She said it sweetly, his heart swelling with it before his head caught it. "Arya?"

"Shut up."

"Fine, then."

He leaned back against a stocky tree, closing his eyes to shut out the rising sun between the branches, but if it were anyone else besides her, he'd be silent and brooding and talk only long after, still low and angry.

But this was her, so a suppressed smile's fighting its press into his words and he speaks mostly to get the rise out of her sigh. "You'd think I'd have gotten a more sensible lass to run off with me. She doesn't bring clothing and kitchenwares and a sock full of coin, she brings scrolls of numbers and a sword and a book with lots of images."

"She'd have brought a cat, too, but cats make you sneeze."

"Sounds like a mean woman, she is."

"Not thoughtful?" she asks as innocently as she can, a jest in both parts. When she looks back to him, his eyes are open as he watches her again with a grin lifting the corners of his lips, and she mutters that he's stupid, her default when something sharp in her stomach can't keep her eyes holding his gaze.

"Not at all."

"Pity."

"There goes Essos?"

"And the Dornish wine, I suppose. No Sand lasses for you."

"Oh," he says, like he thought this might have come up eventually. "I've never seen why men need more than one woman. I've only ever wanted to content myself with one."

"To _content_ yourself?" she laughs brightly, glancing back to him with a snort. "That makes you sound so old. Boring. Would you say to.. satiate? Next?"

"I don't want to be crass," he defends, his cheeks turning pink like his nose was red in the cold. "What'd you call it?"

"You know what I'd call it," and she laughs harder, a giggling edge bordering hysterics. "Your face gets any more red, it might stay like that."

"Mean woman," he repeats, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

"Guess you'll have to find a new one," she tells him, but when his eyes snap back to hers, it isn't half the joke she thought it was, and oh, no.

"Arya," he says, because he knows that look on her face, the doubt and the peculiar thinking that isn't good things, not when her fingers are starting to harshly crease the parchment in her hands.

"I bet lots of ladies would want to wed a young, handsome lord, one with thick arms, a man's beard, all the means and wealth of Storm's End, right?" She tries to half-smile, that makes it hurt less somehow, but when he tries to laugh, says that she just called him handsome, she can't feel too much but the cold.

"Why's it matter what they want?" he asks. He doesn't sound angry, but he sounds like he's getting there.

"Well, maybe they won't want to, some don't, but when they're not sent to some old lord, they'd love you. And your keep's council would love that, too."

And the more she thinks on it -- she doesn't want to -- the more it makes sense, the more probable it seems, and _seven hells_ , how did they go from him once fretting the prospect of her locked to an arranged marriage to her worrying the same for him, when gods, it would happen. It would, wouldn't it?

To probably some pretty, sweet thing that would keep her courtesies and respect all the lords in Westeros and swear her fealty to the Silver Queen without an ounce of sarcasm or dislike or apprehension. She'd probably wear dresses, too, and sew and do proper things and be the perfect bride and wife. And mother.

"Seven hells," she mumbles, frowning down at her hands like it'd make the bitter fear setting to her stomach disappear where affection just was. "You'd have lots of blue-eyed sons, wouldn't you?"

And it's so ridiculous when his dumbstruck look is telling her everything she knows and can't listen to, but she doesn't know how to stop when cruel fate has her questioning why Gendry would love her when he knows how she's dreadful and crass and a murderer (not as sweet and soft and timid as men like their brides, right?) even as he's nearly smiling again with his eyes still confused and his bulk rising to stand.

"You know I'd rather have --" But he cuts himself off unsurely since they've never spoken about children and the self-same doubt he's forgotten in the Godswood doesn't have him pretentious enough to hope that far into the future.

Though if he's thinking he'd rather see grey-eyed daughters in the years to come, that'd be just her luck if he was some lord in need of an heir and she couldn't give them to him.

Fucking hell. "Gendry," she starts again, shifting away when he walks over to her. She stands by herself as he offers his hands, and oh, no. He was enough for her, yes, and the rest of the world could burn if they thought the bastard knight was worthy of the disgraced, outlaw lady in the Brotherhood but not when she was a once-princess, indirect wardeness. And now she's caught in all these vulnerabilities, and she's thinking this is how fools act in love before she's thinking it's stupid, her default when something sharp in her stomach can't keep her eyes holding his gaze.

"Why are you worrying, Arya?" he asks, and he sounds so calm when her mind's so loud. "None of that would happen, I don't want to be in Storm's End, even."

"But why not?" Because that glimmer of hope just doesn't make sense. "All men want power when they have it, like wealth, lands, anything. You think you'll be different?"

"You think I wouldn't be?"

"I wouldn't know," but he shakes his head at her, sounds just short of angry when he speaks again.

"You do. You know me, m'lady."

"You can't," she starts, shifting her weight to her left side, folding her arms over her chest, "you can't call me that like my agitation will change the discussion."

"Arya."

"No."

"Arya," he repeats, a bite to his tone and a grit to his teeth as he reaches out. "You're stupid."

His fingers are surprisingly gentle as he curls her hair behind her ear, cups her cheek with his rough palm. "And you," she mumbles weakly, closing her eyes.

Maybe she was, though "If I'd known saying that would have knocked some sense into you, I'd have said it sooner," he teases quietly. "I don't know why you're worried. I don't want more than this."

"Yet you act like you can't have this," and the gentle moment's gone again, her eyes opening to his darker blue.

"'Cause I --"

"No," she interrupts, tilting her cheek out of his hand. "You can. It'd be simple. You're the one ruining it when it'd be so easy. No one's batting an eye at us."

"Except for the people that talk about us, how improper we are, like I'm a fool for setting my sights to the Lady of Winterfell. Gods, like you even are a lady, I remember you at ten and one, all matted hair and a boy's clothes and you tellin' me I was hot when our breaths were freezing before us the further north we got."

She was offended 'till she wasn't, because he was warm even then, his skin hot to the touch like he was made of the forge he worked in. Everything else should have been that black and white (or maybe not). "You were," she says. "I used to worry you'd taken to a fever in the night sometimes. I --" She almost doesn't say it, but his thumb circles softly at her cheek, too close to her mouth, and he can probably feel her skin start to burn. "I think I loved you then, I just didn't know it."

"I think so. It was different, though, wasn't it? Not all passion, but something more innocent."

"We were for an instant or two. Maybe for the first day."

"You nearly killed Hot Pie, didn't you?"

"Oh," she says. It really isn't that simple at all.

"You still worrying?"

"It was stupid, wasn't it?" She sighs just a little, moving a step closer to him since she knew he'd curl his arms around her.

"Mmm," he gruffs out, warm and deep. "You are. _Darling_ ," just to make her smile before she rolls her eyes.

And she does. "And what if it does happen?" She doesn't like the hint of fear in her voice, but it's there, and he tightens his arms around her shoulders.

"I told you that all I want is this."

"To live in the Godswood forever?" she teases, a sudden quiet settling over them and the weirwoods hot in the sun.

"Or wherever you wanted."

But then it's back, how selfless he is against everything she is, and gods. "That hardly seems fair," when it seems he'd be giving up so much. "Aren't you ambitious?"

"A bastard from Flea Bottom with his arms around Arya of House Stark," he chuckles, loud and obnoxious (like his father), the vibrations of the sound catching her cheek at his sternum. "What other ambition is there?"

"Won't some think the son of Robert Baratheon ought to be king?"

"I don't see how that concerns me none," he says slowly.

"Gendry."

"I don't want that, Arya. Don't you ever listen?"

Seven hells, she wants to. She doesn't want to revert back doubt and worry ago, but she shakes her head, squirms in his arms so he'll let her go. "I never wanted a husband, but now I don't want you to be anyone else's husband."

  
He frowns, like he was waiting for the catch, the objection he might be starting to worry is coming, but that -- that he can live with. "Just yours?"

"Some might want to kill the son of the Usurper, too."

"They can try, but Arya? You still shouldn't worry about any of that. Fretting over nothing is useless. And," he adds, a slow grin brightening his eyes, "you love me, remember?"

Because it's as plain as the sky reflecting off that lake, but she's shaking her head, and his eyes are piercing as they stare at her, and maybe he doesn't have her truth after all when a stupid thought might change it. "No. _No_ ," but her eyes feel like she'll start to cry, and not here, it's not peace anymore.

"You do," he laughs after a second, like he can see right through her. "You've said it. I've heard it. You can't say you don't when I know you do."

But she turns away, and then there's the crunch of the dry earth being crushed by his boots, and he sounds smarmy like it's years ago, like he's telling her that he knows she's a girl and anything else she says to convince him otherwise is futile. Pointless. Just like now, like the present, and oh, gods.

"I know," she says, because she does, and she slumps back against his chest since she knows he'll curl his arms around her. He does, and she breathes in his jerkin, and he breathes easily again, whispers tenderly that she's stupid like that won't crush the rest of her personality's natural defenses. She doesn't know how it works, but it does; she is. "I am. I'm sorry. Things will work out this time, right? They'd better."

Or the world could burn all over again, another reign of fire and rebellion not unlike the last, but just if the stag was taken from the wolf this time.


	18. 'Till We Try

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I told him it was a joke," she muttered apologetically, holding his bandaged hand.
> 
> "No one laughed," he grumbled, looking away.

"I'm not sure if I believe," he answers when she asks. "I think I wanted to. Of course everyone knows the Seven in Flea Bottom, but it was easy to forget they exist. They never did much for anyone."

 _Me_ , he thinks, when the prayers to the Mother and Father and Warrior weren't answered. But he did start praying to the Smith eventually, and those were answered in part. He tried a prayer to her old gods when he was desperate and thinking they'd do for him what the fire couldn't, but when that didn't work, he tried the Seven again.

Specifically, the Stranger. And since no one prayed to the Stranger, he hoped that'd make him listen when he prayed for her.

And it did, but the Stranger had His due, didn't He? And a good laugh.

But it's warner today, yesterday's chill left them this pleasant fourth day in the Godswood, and he's been lounging on the grass, looking up to the blue-grey sky between the branches and listening to Arya splash in the water he was sure would freeze her to death sometime.

"What about here?" she asks him after a moment, the old gods, and he looks over to her where water's trickling down her face and onto her neck.

"It doesn't feel like a forest," though it's easy enough to pretend it is one -- when in night or day nothing much matters to them.

Today's one of those days, so he sits up, smiles, watches her ring the water out of her soaked hair. "Because it isn't just a forest."

"I know," and his smile spreads to a grin at how annoyed she sounds, "but it's no clear temple or shrine. Just trees."

"Just trees with faces that watch you while you sleep," she laughs, turning back around.

Within half the hour, they're back in the courtyard of Winterfell.

She laughed at him the entire way they walked, but he couldn't blame her when he must have looked a sulking fright. It wasn't fear of the trees, though, the sap like blood flowing through them like Bran she told him when he stared at a particularly gruesome tree.

He just thought he heard one talking.

But they made it to the courtyard where no one noticed them until a few started to, and with her small trunk over his shoulder, her hands at his sleeve, he asked her if maybe her brother would make him stop working because of this.

"I wouldn't let him," she huffs, scowling at a giggling girl as she passed them. "But look."

"Someone's inside?" he frowned, turning his gaze up from the stones to the sky where she pointed. Smoke was billowing up in dark clouds from the chimney, black against grey, and he took her arm with his free hand, guiding her over to the smithy. "Need to see it first. Can you wait for me?"

She scowled when he gave back her trunk and promptly let it drop. "Like I'm not going inside," she said, swatting at his arm before pushing past the doors.

"Lady Arya!" an elder voice greeted, sounding pleased. "And Master Gendry." Mikken laughed, rising up from his kneel. "Returned, are we?"

"Mikken," Arya sighed. Then laughed, moving past a flustered Gendry to the room at the back. "You don't need to call me that."

"Mikken," he started, rubbing at the back of his neck. "I'm so --"

"No, you're not," the old man laughed, and Gendry worried he was bitter until he laughed and nodded his head back to where Arya was making an ungodly amount of noise in the back. "I wanted a day away, anyways. Being surrounded by your grandchildren is all well and good until there's thirteen of 'em or so. Don't let that happen to you, lad."

Not knowing what to say, Gendry just awkwardly stared at the metalwork, not at Mikken's accusing gaze. "I can.. I can come back after," he promised.

"Nonsense. Take her back."

He said something else about being young, something about dreams, something that he laughed at as Arya came out, told him his face was red.

\- -- - -- -

"Can you wait?" she asked him. He gave her a look. "I need to see Jon first. I'll be quick."

As a cat, he remembered, nodding his resign. "I'll wait," and she squeezed his arm, disappeared behind the heavy solar door.

It wasn't Jon she found, though, it was a figure that leapt from the shadows the instant the door latched.

"Rickon!" she startled, watching him light a candle that lit up the room. "Where's Jon?"

"Don't know," he says, and damn that smirk. "Where's Gendry?"

"Outside."

"Oh. Were you howling the other night?"

She laughed at the memory and nodded, crossing the room. "We did. Did you?" Because he did often, sometimes sounding more real than the direwolves themselves and frightening children and scaring the horses.

When Rickon didn't laugh, however, she stopped, her face instantly contorting impassive. Two could play this game; her curious little brother wouldn't win. "Well?" she asked next, indifferent.

He finally cracked a grin, all pointy incisors looking wolfish. She didn't know if he was happy or angry or malicious, oh. "Did he take you?" he asked like it was a warning.

If she was Sansa, she'd have startled and spluttered and gasped in indecent hysterics, but she was Arya, so she just stared, telling herself to remember to make Gendry wear a cup to bed tonight. "No," she smirked. "I gave it to him."

Something clattered to the floor behind them, and it was Jon's plate where he dropped it at the door.

Oh.

\- -- - -- -

"I told him it was a joke," she muttered apologetically, holding his bandaged hand.

"No one laughed," he grumbled, looking away.

"Well," she started, biting her lip and fighting a smile. He winced when her fingers squeezed his. " _I_ did when I saw the look on Jon's face."

"But then Ghost bit me."

"But he didn't tell him to, Rickon did! And he could have gotten Shaggy to. You might have had no hand. You're lucky Ghost's gotten so fat and slow."

"So lucky," he said dryly, reaching for her other hand.

"Oh, shush. Just tore your skin a little."

He frowned at her. "He said it'd be my-- uh. Next."

"Your cock?"

" _Arya_."

"You said it first," she griped, using her nails to bite into the back of his hand.

"Years ago. And you didn't see the look on Lord Rickon's face. I don't think he was jesting."

"I told him it was a joke!"

" _After he got Ghost to bite me_."

"He just chewed on you a little!"

He glowered at the white direwolf lounging lazily on an overstuffed pillow in the corner. "He's lucky it wasn't my forging hand."

"Yes," Arya cooed, leaning forward to kiss Gendry's brow as he sighed when Ghost whined. "He's _very_ sorry."

\- -- - -- -

"Gendry?"

"Lady Shireen!" He scowled when Arya elbowed his ribs, still sore at her from her very much unfunny joke.

"Don't call your cousin that."

"Yes, don't call your cousin that please," Shireen smiled timidly, anxiously smoothing down her hair to detract from the scars marring her cheek. "We've met, just not properly." She waited a moment, looking to his bandaged left hand. "I'm sorry for Rickon."

"I apologize for this Stark sometimes, too," he laughs, and of course, he's not bitter about it to Shireen.

 _You laugh like Uncle Robert_ , Shireen wanted to say, but no, no good. _You look like Uncle Renly_ , she was going to say next, but maybe no one wanted to hear that. So she smiled sheepishly, made like Stannis and nodded approvingly. "You're a good Baratheon." She grins when Arya snorts, and then they're talking like they've known each other for ages.

And then Rickon pads in with some ale and passes it to Gendry while he grins at him, pleased to see he's just a bit terrified.

But then there's Jon next, and everyone's laughing like family, duty, honor, Shireen's a member of their pack already just as quickly and casually as Willas was welcomed as well.

"I'm just saying," she giggles, all sensible and Shireen, "who wouldn't want to live in Storm's End?"

"Too hot," Jon frowns, and Gendry shakes his head.

"By the sea, isn't it? That'd make it cool."

"And not as warm as Dragonstone." Suddenly, her eyes lit up, and she squeals. "Baratheons used to sit there, you'll remember!"

"Well, I don't," Rickon laughs, but the way he says it, free and easy, the smirk shadowing over his face making him look dark and twisted, it's unsettling.

It reminds Arya of how she'd walked through the gates of Winterfell like nothing had changed when horrors happened, and oh, no.

"Would the Silver Queen have it, though?" Jon asked. "What of Aegon?"

"Wait!" Shireen giggles (wine made her tipsy, note) and looked to Gendry. "But remember we've dragon's blood, as well!"

"No," says Arya. Until she remembered a lesson from ages ago. Someone married someone, Baratheon, Targaryen. "The blood would have died out through the generations, right?"

"Not in the books." Shireen's eyes narrowed.

"Seven hells," Jon sighed. "You're so much like your father.

"Storm's End, then?"

"Westeros."

"Too much," Gendry laughed tightly, and Shireen remembered how her father wanted her to sit the throne if he couldn't. "We're forgetting that I'm a simple man and don't want anything else."

"But you've more claim than Edric, don't you?"

"Oh," Shireen tsks, "that doesn't matter."

"I think we've wolves in this room, not stags, anyway," Arya mutters.

"..Winterfell?" Rickon asks, looking to Gendry.

"As a Baratheon?"

"Or a Stark."

"But it doesn't work that way," Gendry starts slowly.

"Says who?" Arya rolls her eyes. "A Stark woman's babe should have been named Targaryen, not Stark." Though thank the gods he's a Stark by default, anyways.

"It'd be smart," Shireen interrupts gently. "To settle somewhere. Storm's End is likely yours if you ask for it."

"After all my father did to her family?"

"You'll soon be part of her family through the Starks, won't you?"

And then everyone was staring at Gendry. "Uh," he stutters intelligently, absently shielding his uninjured hand. "Y--"

"Winterfell?" Rickon asks again.

"Yours," Jon smiles, refilling his cup.

"What?" he startles. And though he's confusedly smiling, he isn't jesting. "I don't want Winterfell."

Gendry looked to Jon.

And Jon sent a dark raven somewhere south later that night.

\- -- - -- -

"He loved a girl once," she tells Gendry later.

He can hear the fire crackling quietly, and he tilts his head to the right so his cheek rests against Arya's hair. "I thought so."

"He didn't tell me her name," she says, just as quiet as he is. "Or even what she looked like, who she was, where they met. Just that they'd been in love."

"Is she..?" He trails off softly, pleased when she presses more closely to him.

"I think so." They're both quiet a moment; he doesn't know how to hold her with just one hand, but maybe that's best. He can breathe easier this way. "There's something someone used to say, someone silly and girlish."

He thinks of Sansa, but no -- Arya. Maybe the one that wed Ramsay Bolton.

"Jeyne," she says quietly, and it's strange, she never asked him his thoughts on the god of death. "Her name was Jeyne. She used to call me Horseface. She used to say death was the greatest love story and prattle about how romantic that was."

She scoffs softly, and he almost laughs, turns just a little in bed to face her, nevermind that his arm's falling asleep where she's laying on it. "She doesn't sound too bright."

"I don't know. I don't want to think about that," but they're not running anymore. "I know they sounded like you should make a choice," she starts, "but you don't have to."

"I don't know. I don't want to think about that."

"Alright," she whispers.

They're quiet again, the fire's still crackling soothingly in the corner, and she isn't asleep, he knows, but he's almost there.

"Do you think your father really loved my aunt?" she asks him after stretches of quiet.

He's awake now.


	19. I Helped You Open Up Your Wings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He groaned and closed his eyes when her knees gave way, pressing her hips closer to the warmth he could feel spreading like heated thoughts, like a good fight always won. Or lost. "You -- you still need to move," but she kissed him again.

"We haven't fought in a while," she tells him loudly.

Mikken's gone silent where he's (hiding from his family and dropping eeves) studiously looking over the metalwork lining the shelves like he's oblivious. Like he hadn't shown up early this morning to Gendry already starting his work at the forge and Arya still asleep in his bed.

When he looks over at her, she's acting just as innocent as ever. She's swinging her feet off the edge of a bench just because Mikken demanded she not sit atop an anvil, pushing her hand through her braided hair nonchalantly with beads of sweat sliding down the hollow of her neck, and that look -- the smirk settling a challenge into her eyes, bright in the light the fire reflects. He's lost already, thinking of their last fight, the first spar of all legs and her flushed cheeks and his hands at her thighs.

The tips of his ears are red. "We argued this morning," he grumbles out.

"I mean all proper," she says offhandedly. Distracted. Goading. "You like doing things the proper way, don't you?"

The hammer (and it isn't easy with just the one good hand) doesn't even hit the steel he's trying to shape. It's a complete miss, the familiar burn in his forearms is just frustrating right about now, useless to the metal beneath his hands. "Usually."

"So I hear."

"..Did you need anything? Here?" He tries to sound polite since it's her, since she's watched him work plenty of times, just never with anyone there when she's so godsbent on distracting him. So he only succeeds in sounding rude.

She just hums thoughtfully, smiles close-lipped at Mikken when he looks to her. "No. Just want to bother you."

"Well, you're succeeding. I'm trying to work. _M'lady_ ," he adds, since it always made her bristle. Maybe it'd make her leave him alone since he wasn't in the mood to have his work ethic questioned in the few hours it'd take someone to hear and geld him.

"I'm not stopping you," she says, a roll of her eyes and a bite at her lower lip. "Unless you wanted to spar."

"Arya."

"I haven't had a decent opponent in ages. Just a spar! And then you can come back to smith."

He had to give in, she knew. He always did, so he reached for a rag after setting down his hammer, wiped at his face. "About time for noon meal anyways," he grumbles, working off the ties of his apron. "Then I'm coming back, and you're going somewhere else."

"Of course." Until she just called him away again. But he had to know that by now, and if he didn't, it wasn't her fault.

"I won't be long," he tells the old man resentfully, every part of him bitter as he walks out the door with a sword in his hand, not stopping to wait for her.

"Oh, slow down," she sighs, her eyeroll audible.

He scowls but stops, waits for her to stroll past him with another eyeroll. "You like playing the lady when it suits you fine, don't you?"

"I haven't commanded you to anything," she says over her shoulder, but then she laughs in a harsh way that's still so gentle and sweet, and he doesn't care that half of Winterfell likely thinks he doesn't have his priorities focused properly on his work, his place.

He just doesn't know how he got to be so soft for this girl with bright eyes in the cloudy sky, a subtle slowness to her quick gait as she waits for him, too proud to admit so. "I like how stubborn you can be," he tells her.

She laughs again, bright and loud, tells him he'll only say that once, and it's like summer. And even if it's short and their time to rest in the ease that has them laughing and living like the two luckiest fools to come out of a war and two countries' depressions in the dark, it's real.

It might be winter in her eyes, but the way she's suddenly soft and strangely sweet, the ten year old clinging to his arm when something frightening had her forgetting she was fearless and brave, the seventeen year old woman quietly slipping her hand into his, making him believe they could live through the next.

A thousand of them. Winters.

But he doesn't say that, just squeezes her hand, focuses on the calluses of her fingers instead of the looks they're getting, and he doesn't let go. "I'd offer to protect you, but I don't think you'd swoon and give me your favor like other ladies might." She scowls at him like that's his fault. "Maybe a crown of blue roses?"

That makes her laugh again, the sound so rich he should consider aspiring to be a fool instead of a lord just to hear more of it. He wasn't sure how he survived without it, but she speaks before he can admit that and turn into a real fool. "I'd be the one crowning you. Love and beauty," she snickers like that's ridiculous, but she raises her left arm so it's folded in front of her and hugging his bicep, her fingers still locked with his.

"Can I tell you that you're beautiful?"

"Mmm."

Yes, he doesn't know why he fell so far for a difficult lass that has her say on everything and does only what she pleases. "Not the practice yard?"

They weren't heading the right direction, but her scowl stopped cruelly twisting her features as she led him towards the Godswood. "Here."

"Arya," he starts. The Godswood was vows and kisses and something sacred that wasn't for sparring and how hot his blood was starting to flow.

"Stubborn," she mutters.

But he isn't listening, he sees a marked tree he'd never noticed before a little ways off the path. It's trunk is scarred, scratched like someone took a blade to it, like a wolf tore its claws into it, and she shrugs when he looks to her, a question in his eyes.

"I did that when I first came back to Winterfell," she says simply. Or she thinks she did it, anyways. She really can't remember. "You wouldn't have liked me then."

Her laugh is quieter, and he wonders where this Arya's been, the one who's laughed more this hour than she sometimes does in days. "I always did," he replies gruffly. Then pauses. "Sometimes I wanted to throttle you, though, you could be bothersome, but mostly I --"

He never gets to finish, he's wincing as she's squeezing her fingers tight around his bandaged hand, hissing in suppressed pain when her hand clasps around the back of his neck and forces his face to meet hers, not breathing when she bites his bottom lip.

He can feel the wind whip at her hair so it brushes against his jaw, and he reaches for her waist with his free hand, holds onto her as she presses closer to him and shifts where the sword at his belt keeps her from getting too close. He can smell her earthly like the trees, her breaths hot and wet where it's a war and they're both alive and he's breathing in her teeth, her tongue, her kissing him. His heart's erratic.

It was something fierce, and when she pulls away too soon (too late), her chin is slightly chafed by his beard again, and he tries to not think of more of her skin falling victim to the prickle of his beard as she leads him off, red-faced and full of purpose.

"I'd offer to protect you," she mocks dryly, "but we can't have you swooning anymore than you already are."

Well, maybe he doesn't really love this cruel woman after all.

"I've gotten better, I'll have you know. With a sword."

"Since when?"

"Since you last told me I was doing it wrong."

He watches her look as if she's trying to remember before she rolls her eyes again. "If you hadn't improved in all these years, I don't.."

"Don't what?" he challenges.

He watches her _not_ bite at her lower lip absently (it's a bit swollen) since she's never been good at finishing her moot threats. "There's a clearing up here."

"You're still sure I won't hurt you?"

It's not a sunny clearing of luscious grass and yellow flowers and a sweet breeze, it's grey and woodsy and dry and barren and better than all those scenic places of songs.

"Of course," she tells him, letting go of his hand to stretch like she did the last time they crossed blades. "All I've got to do is strike your bandaged palm. And I will if you don't make this a fair fight."

He smiled at the threat, knowing full well he couldn't pose a danger to her. She was safe with him like she had been always, but when she and her blade were advancing on him the instant he took his sword in hand, he never was truly safe with her, was he?

In a fight, in love.

Seven hells.

She came forward with a thrust, sweeping her sword downwards from his shoulder. He dodged, but she tapped his forearm with the flat-side, a goad, and he pushed forward as she laughed.

The dirt and rock beneath their feet wasn't the unsteadiest of terrain, but he was starting to struggle, his brute strength against the quickness she parried, feinted, always managed to get a well-placed hit twice over each time his sword struck her. "You're too easy," she said, her smile distracting him for a faulty moment.

He heard the tearing fray of fabric, her soft laughter, and it warmed his blood like it was starting to stain his shirt only a little -- the energy starting to pound in his ears when he moved towards her.

They circled each other; she waited for his next move and strayed just out of his reach. But force over speed, and the strike that could have poured her intestines over the ground only tore the fabric at her hip.

She kicked his shin after another circle of waiting for the next to make their move -- his feigned parry -- he grabbed her wrist to steady himself (to make her drop her sword), and she hissed in pain. And cursed him.

"I'm sorry," he laughed, bleeding and hot and and grinning while she struggled against him. Until she pushed against his chest and slammed her knee into his.

He had the wind knocked out of him when his back hit the ground, his bandaged hand aching and his body jerking beneath her. His sword lay discarded with hers, but her hands pressed tightly to his throat, forceful enough to hurt, soft (expertly) enough to not cut off his circulation and impair his breathing.

"Yield," she demanded, hair falling over her face, lips parted beautifully.

And she was straddling him, her knees crushing the holy dirt beneath them, her hands quickly leaving his pulse point to rest over his chest, calluses against his roughspun jerkin. She needed to move. "You need to move," he managed gruffly, and she rolled her eyes.

"Not until you yield."

"But I won."

She punched his jaw. Hard. The back of his neck hit the ground, and her lips replaced her fist on his face. "You didn't."

She sounded fierce though her kisses were soft, brushing against his chin, his cheek, his bruising skin beneath his beard. "I didn't," he had to say because he thought he could feel the hot, wet press of her tongue against the corner of his mouth.

"You didn't," she breathed, a kiss with the words.

He groaned and closed his eyes when her knees gave way, pressing her hips closer to the warmth he could feel spreading like heated thoughts, like a good fight always won. Or lost. "You -- you still need to move," but she kissed him again.

"You don't sound like you want me to."

"Not proper," he grumbled low and deep.

"Then stop palming my hips," she murmurs after a moment, wriggling her hips where his fingers bite into the cloth. "Tell me why it isn't proper; I'll tell you why you're stupid."

"Arya," he curses, his cheeks tinged red when she rubbed against where they were pressed together.

"Your heart's beating fast."

"You're killing me, woman."

"Gendry?" He wants to swear at his name as she says it, but she looks a faded hollow of shy, mostly determined above him, and he knew they'd be here in the Godswood. He suspected, and he's a breathless fool with both his hands around her fuller hips, toned muscle and womanliness, and oh, gods. His throat's dry. She pushes on his chest, sitting up so she's looming over him with her hands skimmed down at his abdomen. "Tell me something."

He opens his eyes, watches her, almost asks her what she wants to know before he remembered she's Arya and expects him to know already. "Can't think when you're sitting like that."

When she squirms her knees to get herself more comfortable, to make him more _un_ comfortable, he does his best to stifle a groan, to take deep, non-compromising, calming breaths. But hers are getting quicker. "Try."

"You.. laugh when I bleed," he starts, his voice lowering a husky octave when she pushes her hips a little forward against him experimentally. His fingers tighten into her hips, and it's all he can do to not help her slide her hips better over his or push her away. It's too warm, seeping through his chest, all these layers.

"I laugh at you whenever." She scoffs, but it's breathless, and when she clenches her teeth, flexes her jaw, she's beautiful.

Even as she pauses again, the same flicker of shyness before it's lost to her determination and confidence before she can think twice about it. "I'm doing this right," she tells him in that domineering tone, though he wouldn't have any experience otherwise if he knew she was or not.

She just _was_ , because he -- "You should still move, Arya," he rasped, reaching his good hand up to tangle through her loose hair.

"Then stop," she countered like it was still his fault.

Heels to the ground, he lifted himself up so he was sitting with her astride him, her fingers resting at the neck of his tunic. "You tell me something," he demanded gently next. Because there was space between them and he could breathe.

"I want to touch you."

" _Arya_ ," he groaned. He could feel himself twitching with her words. He had more godsdamned control than this.

She rolled her eyes, but if it was something she (he) wanted, she'd be back to it. "You still kiss me like you can't."

"Because I --" When she raised her arm to punch him again, he saw and caught her fist in his hand, using the space between them to keep her close. " _Stop_ doing that."

"You stop," she huffed. And her smile was spring before it turned sad. "You not being baseborn for true doesn't make a difference to you, does it?"

Confused, he frowns at her, face-to-face with her pink cheeks, her shallow breaths, her dry ice eyes bright. "No, it's not that. Just the.. _proper_ way. For you. What if you -- I couldn't do that to you. You're too much of a lady for a bastard child."

She rolled her eyes and hooked her legs around his back, pulling her hips flush to his. "You're going to ask what I want about that," ladies and bastards, she murmured. Her eyes were boring into his, darker in lust. "Go on. Ask."

"Arya," he sighs. In a slow movement, he presses forward, feeling her arms curl at his shoulders as he laid her back so he lumbered over her. Her fingers rose to push his shaggy ebon hair out of his eyes. "What do you want? From a life like this?"

"Rickon's convinced you'll make a better ruler than the Dragon Queen," she smiles.

He bit his tongue. He didn't want that, but she knew that, and her legs shifted so he could better lean over her, not touching. "And you?"

"You said we weren't starting a war."

"I don't want to. I don't plan to, I mean."

She tilts her head, her chestnut hair splaying over the soil. He sees her eyes look empty in a flicker of an instant and something not Arya. "I hate Lyanna sometimes," she whispers. "I used to when I was younger, Father always told me about her, and it made him sad. I hated her, and I think I still do."

"But she gave you Jon," he says softly, careful not to force his weight on her as he touches her cheek lightly. He knew how she loved her favorite brother. He'd known for years.

"But not for much longer. He sent a raven to King's Landing. The Queen. His aunt."

He laughed at her grimace. "I'm sure he knows what he's doing."

"Moons ago, a Karstark told me to stay away from Targaryens." Her eyes weren't spring or summer anymore. Just winter and bitterly cold. He brushed his thumb over her lip just to get the warmth back into her face, but she glared at him. "He warned me of history and Stark women and dragons."

"He doesn't need to worry."

She glowered up at him, and he sighed into her cheek before rolling off of her and laying at her side. And then he laughed when she elbowed him so he'd curve his arm under her. "I do like Gendry Waters," she told him.

"Not Gendry Baratheon?"

She was quiet for far too long, so he tugged her closer to him where she fit, so he could breathe all the heavy doubt and darkness into her flyaway hair where it'd fade. "King Gendry Baratheon, First of His Name. Lord and Protector of the Seven Kingdoms," she says quietly. "King of the Andals and the First Men? Some kings die young, and some kings have their crowns taken from them. Some men never become kings, but some kings don't wear crowns."

He can feel her watching him, but it sounds like the trees are talking again. Words he can barely make out, soft and quiet. Kings, crows, "I won't do it," he settles for saying. A throne was never what he wanted. Maybe just a family, something more than a purpose of reshaping metal through fire and steel, something more than just his muscles keeping him alive through hardship.

"Alright," she whispers, but she doesn't sound sure.

Honestly, he isn't either, but he lets himself pretend in the woods that are sacred and sacrilegious to them. "Don't think about it," he says instead with a short, teasing laugh.

"Alright," she says more strongly, and she whisps a laugh, too.

"You laugh at the roses with thorns," he tells her suddenly, remembering how she had frowned at a flower until it sliced her finger by accident. How the good things weren't enough 'till there was a way out of the misery and beyond the suffering and with that human turmoil that brings them back to life. To here.

Her laugh is brighter, and he swallows the sound with his lips, a chaste kiss of closed eyes and her shallow breaths. It's only a second before she stands and pulls him up to his feet, but _right_ , he reminds himself. Propriety.

"Dinner," she demands, then looks sideways at him. "Then we can take care of your arm."

"Priorities," he smiles. But he loves her.

"Eventually we'll have to stop running."

"I know." Sword in hand, he reaches for her with his other. "Coming back to Winterfell was a start."

"We never left," she griped, and he smiled as he drew her closer to his side.

"We hid. We came back. The rest will work itself out."

"It better," she repeated like days ago, bumping into his shoulder as they walked back through the trees. It better.

\- -- - -- -

"I heard interesting things today," Jon tells her later that night.

"Lke what?"

"Oh," he says vaguely. "Lots of things." And really now, Gendry would have told her whatever it was already. "..Did you know Tyrion Lannister is still near Winterfell?"

"I think so?" She shrugged idly. Didn't need to know, to be honest, but at least whatever gossip he listened to wasn't about her.

Jon just sighs, oh-so sadly. "He formally invited me to a brothel."

"..Oh."

"And then we spoke," he continued. "I'm considering accompanying him back to King's Landing."

At once, her face fell, and she didn't want to be here. "For the Queen?"

"For the North."

"Why?" she asked wary. It didn't make sense.

But he likely knew that, smiling at her like she was eight and not nearly eighteen. "You don't have to worry, Arya." But even his stoic frowns were better than that forced bit of a smile.

It's like everyone was running. It better all work out, oh, gods.

"Right," she nods. "Of course." Dragons and direwolves and stags. "I once wished the North would secede," he doesn't even look up, "but I don't think that's smart now."

"Why?"

But she doesn't really have an answer. There are too many to piece together. "We'll think on it tomorrow," she says like she's teasing, like they aren't better at fighting other kinds of battles.

He smiles, so she tells him of Gendry instead.


	20. Might Be

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "The North shouldn't see a single raven from King's Landing."
> 
> "It's not the same it was years ago. You know that."
> 
> "But you were never there. They've never really been kind to Starks." _The Targaryens especially_ , but she won't say it.

"You probably want to hear about how I thought of you often, don't you? How I remembered you when I tried to forget everything else?" She turns so they're face to face, bodies pressed closely together on the cotbed in his smithy, but her smile isn't quite a smile.

He's not sure what it is, but she's teasing him with that shadowed smirk, he knows that much, and their arms and legs have twisted together in the night. He can't say when, he'd just rather live forever in the crease of her elbow bent against his chest, the arch of her foot over his ankle, the small of her back against his arms.

"How I always thought of the bull-headed blacksmith's apprentice," she hums thoughtfully, whispering to the quiet. "In dreams, in memories. What if I told you I didn't think about you at all?"

He's not sure what game she's playing at, but "You wouldn't have got so angry at me when I came back if you hadn't thought of me," he tells her softly. He isn't as stupid as she says he is, and he can feel her breathe in a smile.

"That is true."

"Did you?"

After a moment, she admits it. "Every once in a while. I'd see fair skin and inky black hair and think it was you briefly before those thoughts were pushed away. Or even blue eyes. But I saw Mother and Robb and Rickon and Sansa in those eyes, too."

Didn't really want to, but it grounded her here.

"Family," he realizes, and she pauses because she never considered that.

"Yes." She raises her hand to trace over the lines of his face, sloping down his browbone, cheekbone, lips. "Family," she whispers, though it sounded better when he said it, more sure though slow spoken.

Everything sounded that way tonight. They talked about Rhaegar and Lyanna and blue roses and strong drink. About Bran and how he used to pray to the Seven instead of the old gods like all good knights did. About how life might have a plan for all of them after all.

When he asked her about Jon, however, she didn't have an answer. Maybe no one did, but he told her shock quiet about her lady mother, almost ceased altogether when he heard her breaths stop.

Yet there was something in the way he spoke that made it bearable to hear. He didn't tell her more of Catelyn Stark's raspy, dead voice, her deader eyes. He told her of the glimpse of Lady Stoneheart he recognized as the woman Arya spoke of and called Mother, her face and the chink of tears and the hand she held to her throat when word spread Sansa was found in the Eyrie. When Arya hadn't really wed that bastard Ramsay Bolton. When that bastard Jon Snow was very much alive. When Bran and Rickon and Arya were rumors and gossip that proved true, and their lady mother might have just wanted what he remembered Arry wanting the entire time. Her family.

"Stop," she hissed at him, weak in the dark. His cheeks were wet with her tears.

\- -- - -- -

"A raven. From the South?"

"From King's Landing, Arya."

" _Why_."

"The letter wasn't for me," he told her, affronted. "I don't know everything that happens in Winterfell."

"But it's your responsibility to know," she said, unphased. "Who was it for?"

"Lord Tyrion."

"Why?"

"Because he's sitting on her council? Perhaps he's needed back. I need to work."

"Then do that later. What'd he tell the Queen?"

"You think I'd open the contents of their sealed letters?"

"Why wouldn't you?"

"Because they're both family and friend."

"They weren't always."

"Time's changed all of us."

"Times could be changing again, Jon."

"You don't have anything to worry about, sweetling," but he said it and smiled forlornly, almost like he was Ned Stark.

\- -- - -- -

"I'm worried," she announced. Just walked into the smithy like she would have if she didn't but did own it, louder still than the stinging hiss of a sword left to a bucket of water.

"Why's that?"

She watched him take a rag to his face and wipe off the sweat and soot, and the hollow of her throat as she swallows, the heat of her eyes lingering over the muscles in his arms: it's enough to make him want more or less of a shirt.

"I'm worried Jon will do something stupid," she said, sounding less determined than she did when she stormed in.

"You're staring," he muttered, pretending like it was annoying instead of.. well. He didn't sound all too determined neither. "I told you Jon likely knew what he was doin', don't he?"

She laughed, her cheeks looking redder when she strode forward, perched on the anvil a foot away from where he was standing. "I don't think so."

"And you know all about what he is doing, 'en?"

"Not really, but --"

"Then why are you here?" he laughed. "Go talk to him, see what he's really doing that has you worried."

"But he wants to go to King's Landing, Gendry."

She didn't say it like it was obvious, she said it more casually. Like Jon was going to give up lording and man a farm or swear himself to the Night's Watch's celibacy again. "He has a relative there. He has that relationship? With the crown, aye. Doesn't sound unreasonable."

"She wrote the Imp," she huffed, and he wiped his hands on the front of his apron, moved so he was standing in front of her.

"I hear he hates that nickname."

"Like his brother hates being called Kingslayer? Fuck the both of them."

"Arya."

"It's true."

"Might be, but wasn't it a war then, too? From what they say of the Scab King, he needed to die anyways. Why's it matter who killed him?"

When her eyes flashed, coal grey cold and fiery, he realized he forgot 'till she said it. "Bran," but then that was it though she'd said more of him than any of her siblings did.

"He helped bring Sansa to your brother, too, with Lady Brienne, and he'd have helped you if they'd been able to find you."

To his surprise, she smiled so bright dimples creased both her cheeks. "I might have stayed with her and become an outlaw, honorable knight like she is."

But he froze, because that'd have meant staying with Jaime Lannister, too, wouldn't it? Likely with Needle at his throat until he goaded her into killing him or just spoke true like all men (and women, Arya) that did not-good things for reasons that fill them with regret. And while it wasn't regret keeping Ser Jaime with Lady Brienne on their path to redemption no one knew of, it was something Arya could have understood.

But then she wanted to be an outlaw knight. Seven hells.

"An outlaw knight," he said, remembering. She nodded, but she was staring at his arms again. "Well, then. If you want to be some stupid outlaw knight and get hanged, why should I care?"

"Bastard," she muttered under her breath, flashing her eyes to his. It wasn't malicious, but for the gods' sakes, she was just a girl then.

"You sure you want it?" He only laughed at her, grinning at her exaggerated huff as he spread the ashes he never seemed able to wipe off on her nose. "You won't be kissing no princes. Or kings or even lords, likely. Might not be that much honor, but isn't there gold if there isn't a rope?"

"A rope for the miserable lords that will have to do without my kiss," she grumbled snarky, but he knew she's right if that ever was the case.

A sad fate that'd be, so he didn't want to dwell on it. "You were worried for Jon?"

When she reached for him, he willed himself to step back to take a whetstone to the sword he was finishing, and she scowled. "He's going to so something stupid."

"You can't know that."

"I can sit wondering all the things that could go wrong when he leaves."

"Or," he told her, gesturing to her left, "you can make yourself useful and hand me that cloth."

"The North shouldn't be part of the Seven Kingdoms," she said, throwing it at him.

"Six Kingdoms?"

"Maybe," she muttered, looking thoughtful. It was like mountain ranges were moving somewhere and her fingerprints were all over them.

\- -- - -- -

"Secession?"

"Why not?"

"What about Sansa, the Lady of Highgarden?"

"Jon, she'd still be family."

" _Arya_ , seceding the North wouldn't allow us to aid any of our allies if they needed it."

"No, we could, it'd just cause more problems."

"Exactly," he sighed.

"The North shouldn't see a single raven from King's Landing."

"It's not the same it was years ago. You know that."

"But you were never there. They've never really been kind to Starks." _The Targaryens especially_ , but she won't say it.

"It won't work itself out on its own, you know that, too. And if they don't like Starks," he says, "I'll be a Targaryen."

\- -- - -- -

"Gendry!"

She's all fire again, storming into the smithy like she had little more than a turn of the hour ago, and he's starting to like how it's always here. Always her.

"Talk didn't go well?" he guesses, setting his last project on a shelf for the day.

"No. But what makes it worse, he's right about some things, and that's awful."

"What? Whatever he's doing?"

"No," she says sternly, a roll of her eyes and an eyelash on her cheek he can see when he steps closer, unties the cords of his apron. "That he's right in the first place."

"Terrible."

"I know!"

"I meant you," he laughs, snorting when she smacks his chest. "Don't think about it."

"Like everything else?"

He's trying; there's the hint of her smile curving her mouth upward, and what a mess all this is. "This is different. It doesn't do anything to you directly," he says gently, lofting his sweaty hair out of his eyes.

"But it might mean something to you, and that means something for me. What if the Imp told her? Or Jon? I could slay her Queensguard for you, but it'd take a bit of work."

And she's like the first time he ever changed his mind. The last time he regretted it. His hands reach out to take hold of hers, well-worn calluses fitting together perfectly, and there's like a storm brewing again in her eyes, all fierce determination coupled with something softer, something he'll call love when she ever does more than whisper it like it isn't quite a burden but still something less sure than she'll allow herself.

He's just never loved anything like this, _anyone_ like this, even if she's like a winning and a losing battle in his sternum when she tips forward, presses her cheeks to his collarbones.

She's just it. Everything else will come later, or so he tells her.

It's not really a lie. He doesn't know when Lord Stark started telling him more than he told Arya, but times really were changing.


	21. Your Legs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Arya," he groaned, quiet and rough like it hurt him. Her hands did; he couldn't breathe, just wanted to kiss her. So he did. He wasn't angry anymore, and she tried pushing him back towards the bench, her hands palming at his chest, but he needed her closer, didn't care about anything else for once.
> 
> "Lift me," she demanded in the same tone she had earlier. The way she said it now just had him groaning into her throat, her fingers tight in his dark hair, but she wasn't telling him what to do now.

He doesn't feel like the sun's yet risen, but something stirs him awake and pulls him from his slumber.

Good dreams, he remembers with a smile, his m'lady warm and soft and gasping under him before she cried out in her pleasure and held onto him. He had been buried deep inside her, and that deep breath he took to calm down and remind himself of propriety had him realizing his cock was stiff against her backside.

She hadn't been there when he readied himself for bed and fell asleep, so he bites back a curse, gently tries to peel himself away from the thinness of her gown and turn so his back's facing her.

He's quiet enough to not wake her, except he never is.

She squirms where the heat of his body behind her left her, stretches like a cat as she leans back, tried to curl her arm lazily around him in that cuddly affection she always fucking had in her sleep.

"You were moaning," she whispers drowsily, pressing her face into his arm, and when she relaxes, he hopes she's fallen back to sleep.

He's not as hard as he had been, but she needs to not be pressing her chest against his arm like that. "You were snoring," he whispers back gruffly, tightening his fists in the threadbare blanket to keep them out of his breeches. His dream had been so real.

"I had a strange dream," she mumbles hot into his skin, and that's it. He's limp.

"Oh?" His voice sounds tight. Strained. Fearful.

"Braavos."

"That why you're here, 'en?" he asks in a sudden flash of tenderness, any passionate lust second to the flickers of vulnerability tightening her hands around his bicep.

He trusts himself now to face her though his cheeks are still red, he's sure, but she holds fast to his arm anyways. "It wasn't a bad dream," she whispers, "just a strange one. But you make it better."

He just hopes she didn't stumble her way here without her shoes. Her feet have gotten so delicate, wrapped around his ankle. He knows she leeches off his body heat when they sleep, though, has for years, and her sweetness when she's tired (after she's a grouch) always disappears when she's the first foot to leave the bed and push him away, complaining that she's too hot next to him.

She had his blood hot alright, and his heart warm as she yawned loudly, stretched again, nuzzled into him the seconds before sleep took her once more.

He briefly wonders if she'll be this affectionate after they make love (after she claims him, really), but then he reminds himself that it's an if at the least, an unlikely possibility he shouldn't be thinking none about.

He just can't help it.

But that isn't what he'll say to Lord Stark.

He's here now in the smithy, asking Gendry if he'd mind shutting down his work early, and of course he doesn't mind, he's just partially relieved Arya left when she did.

"Anyone know you're here?" he had asked her from the bed, his eyes on the ceiling averted from whatever she was doing to rile him up. _It's just skin_.

"Probably," she answered like it didn't matter, moving on to do something or another. He had to watch her braid her hair. "They're either stupid, which I don't doubt, and believe I just rise unnecessarily early in the morning, or they're smart enough to not mention it when it looks as if I haven't slept there those nights at all."

"And your brother?" he asked after a long, slightly panicked moment of wondering just how much Jon would turn a blind eye to.

"He trusts you," she had said, looking at him. But her smirk said he didn't trust her, and he suspected he was right in that decision.

He suspected he was right in many decisions, but that worried him a bit standing there covered in soot, unsure again if he ought to kneel.

"Don't," Jon says offhandedly, like he knows, like he understands, and he's already forgetting this lord used to be a bastard, that bastards do rise high places in the world. "Is Arya here?" But he sounds like he's asking just in case she's out there listening, like he know that, too, so he shakes his head, so Jon nods. "She comes here a lot."

"Yes, m'lord, she does. Shouts at me a bit."

"In anger?" he asks, amused.

"Anger at you," he clarifies in a laughing sort of boldness, and Jon doesn't even look surprised. He just laughs with him.

"I deserve all of it. You know," he starts. Gendry sees now that he's standing where Lord Willas Tyrell stood when he told him of Arya, and this is a habit he thinks he likes. "She came to me once. Couldn't have been older than seven or eight. I was in the practice yard with --" ~~_Theon_~~  "-- and at first I think she wants to beg to use my practice blade again."

He smiles one of his rare smiles, and Gendry feels himself ginning, too.

"But she doesn't ask," he continues. "Her nose was red, and with her head high, she told me it didn't matter. I didn't know what she was on about, but she sounded so determined, I was at a loss when she burst to tears. She told me she must be a bastard as well since we looked alike in the Stark look without any Tully in our blood. She was inconsolable for near an hour," but he smiled at that memory. "She wept and wouldn't stop crying, just said that we were bastards."

He looks like he's waiting for Gendry to say something, but he doesn't know what. Jon was still near a head shorter than him, yet those eyes. "She seems to like them," he says awkwardly, slowly, watching the lord's face for any offset emotion. It hit him a second late that it might not have been the best thing to say, that phrases like that make him lose his place, but how was he supposed to care about that? Arya was still fresh in his mind, a constant thought.

"She is." But he still looked as if he was waiting for Gendry to say something.

"M'lord," milord, "you have to believe I don't intend her any dishonor or harm," he started, only just quickly cut off.

"You don't need to tell me again, Ser Gendy."

"Just Gendry, m'lord."

Jon smiled briefly, and youthful boyishness softened his harsh features. "I know you call me by name when you're with Arya. You don't need to pretend otherwise."

But it's not proper, but that led into a discussion about what else wasn't proper, and he didn't want any of that nagging at him when he still felt so light.

"Another message came from the Queen," he continues, gesturing Gendry seat himself on the opposite bench against the wall. He did, rubbing dirty fingers against his jaw. "She still doesn't know your name, your trade, anything other than who your father is."

"I'm guessing she doesn't like it," he says still awkwardly, thinking it all strange. He doesn't know how he's supposed to act what with queens and lords and him suddenly so important. He doesn't want any of it.

"No," Jon laughs quietly. And oh, when things were all that simple. "She didn't write much, either. Only said that the son of the Usurper isn't a friend to the Throne."

"But --"

"Lord Baratheon of Storm's End, I know."

"You're still planning to make the journey to King's Landing, 'en?" he asks hesitantly, trying not to think on Arya's face when her brother rides away, a look that'll tell him of every dark thought she'd managed in the past weeks.

"Yes," Jon sighs. He was the man with the world on his shoulders again. Gendry was still living with the moving mountains and the swell of his heart that made him a bleeding poet. "I've told you what I plan to tell the Queen; I don't think she'll be able to refuse."

"Well, she might not just refuse," he laughs. It doesn't really sound like a laugh; his throat's suddenly tight, and it's like Arya's telling him killing the goldcloaks this time wouldn't be as easy as killing them last time. She didn't even kill them last time.

"It won't come to that," Jon swears, raising his steel grey eyes to Gendry. And Starks know something about the honor of a promise and the cost of it. It's not as encouraging as it should be, so maybe he shouldn't tell Arya this after all. It'd be best coming from her brother with all the stoic rage she'll say she'll never want to see him again in, or so it goes.

"With all respect, Jon," he starts again in the teasing he actually feels twitching his lips to a grin, "you can't tell a queen, even if she's family, what to do."

"But I'm older," he throws back, another quick smile that spreads just a little warmth and hope.

If there's a god, and there has to be, Death, the Seven, the old gods that brought him back here since life was full of reason and wine and irony and predestined circumstances like Lord Tyrion Lannister told him the other night, albeit well into his cups, Jon wouldn't have to resort to what he was considering, at the worst.

He didn't tell Arya any of that, but he might not have even if Jon didn't ask him not to.

"No need to worry her," he said, trying again to smile like he had all their lives figured out, even if at the expense of his own.

Gendry just nodded, tried to smile. Knew the truth of it, knew she'd be back here as always.

Moments after her brother left, actually, quiet (as a cat) and startling Gendry when she spoke.

"What did he want?"

He jumped, raising his head from his hands where he'd been sitting for a few moments, thinking and pondering and praying. It did work well last time. "Who," he asked, in part automatically, in part just to get her talking to him for longer. She didn't answer, though, just gazed at him with her arms crossed, with light streaming in from the open door silhouetting around her like she's some deity he could kneel before, and waiting for her to answer without her prompting him, he just stares at her and the amounting aggravation and anger pouting the corners of her lips and hardening her eyes on him. She's still the most beautiful person he'd ever saw.

"He just wanted to talk," he finally said, slanting his gaze up from her accusatory eyes to the stone ceiling.

"He can talk to you but not to me?" She doesn't wait for him to respond, she's just simpering in her annoyance. "What did he tell you? Is it about the Queen?"

"Yes," he had to say, because he can't really lie to her even if it's just by omission.

But she doesn't know anymore if she's just caught in the past she ran from, lost to her paranoia, or worried history will repeat itself like it seems it's starting to. There were whispers Aegon wanted the throne for himself. "Weddings sometimes dissolve feuds and quarrels. In allies, enemies, family.."

And because he doesn't know what she's thinking, he just thinks she sounds like Jon. "But you don't like arranged marriages."

"But they might be helpful, sometimes," she admits, her arms still folded in front of her. For the royal family especially.

She'd stopped binding her chest, he supposed, noticed truly, but he shouldn't be thinking like that when her cheeks are reddening in her anger. "They can be," he said.

"He won't try to marry her again."

He paused, because he really couldn't say and wasn't sure if it'd be better to. "Uh," he offered, as intelligent as he is.

"Godsdammit, you can't even look at me!"

"I can't tell you that," he tried instead. But he wasn't a diplomat, and she always seemed to see straight through him.

"Does that mean he is?" she demanded.

"I can't tell you, Arya," he said, louder and harsher than he intended.

"If you can't tell me, I can't stop it!"

"He doesn't want you to. You're not supposed to worry about it!"

"It's a terrible decision!"

But it was a good one; she just didn't know, he just couldn't tell her. He raised his hands to his head again, pressed at his temples. "Arya," he sighed.

Instead of sounding angry, he just sounded like she was the stupid one. Though he wasn't looking at her, he saw the faint set of her jaw in defiance, the tightening of her arms before she dropped them to her sides and walked in front of him, demanding his attention. "You really wouldn't tell me something that could keep him from danger?" She said it like it wasn't a question, calm (as still water).

"He asked me not to," he had to tell her, and while his mind tried to convince himself that this was nothing, that she was overreacting, she was a Stark after all. He remembered hearing of Lord Eddard's execution, how everyone said the North remained so detached from the rest of the realm after.

"Because it's dangerous?"

"I don't think so."

"I wouldn't like it, then?"

"Maybe," he relented. Looking at her was suddenly blinding, but when he turned his eyes away, she took hold of the fronts of his tunic and pulled him roughly to his feet.

"Tell me," she commanded in a dry, fierce tone. Stronger (weaker) men wouldn't have submitted.

"It is nothing to worry about," he said, reassuring.

She just scowled, and her hands were at his throat like they had been when they'd met again. "If anything happens to Jon --"

She didn't need to finish. She didn't have much family left, and anything could happen in a few months. He knew that. He couldn't blame her overprotection even as it tightened her hands around his throat in a threat.

"Nothing will," he promised in a slight, garbled tone. He had to, though it wasn't his to keep. He couldn't.

"It better not," she said, calm and quiet and passive as the grip of her hands tightened and her fingers pressed over his pulse.

It frightened him more than all her loud raging and angry shouting. Her eyes seemed deader even though he was him, Gendry, and he was about to reassure her again in vain, to swear her brother's safety when he couldn't guarantee it, but she was looking at him almost like she hated him. Like he was no one, and maybe that's when it hit him.

Her breaths were more ragged. Her fingers grasped harder though her hands were tiny things, but a touch to the the right of his neck, almost up to his ear, had him seeing dark spots for a pressured instant, and he knew her touch was grounded on expertise. She could probably kill him, he knew that.

She said killing didn't make her feel a thing, and it didn't, he believed, but she used to feel guilt, remorse, and if that changed, then he didn't want it to be like this. It wouldn't.

She still bore that look of anger, resent, and if she could kill him (she wouldn't, but she'd avenge the cousin she called brother, kill Gendry himself for the step forward he took in her arms with his eyes looking strangely defiant, almost angry though he'd controlled it), and _if she could kill him_ , he'd fight.

Because she never listened, because her pink lips were smirking in a cruel way that loved to tease, because she was stupider than him, because he was running and running, second to this wolf woman that bossed him around like a servant that grovels at her feet -- because he just liked the feel of her life in one hand, her heart in the other.

He wrapped his hand around her throat, her pale skin smooth to his rough fingers, and he didn't notice her grip sending him breathless, shallow. He just needed to kiss her, so he did.

Her throat in his fist, he seared his mouth to hers. She bit his lip, hard, and her nails bit into the skin of his neck. He wrapped his free arm around her waist, holding her to him so she couldn't move since she was squirming, and she tasted so angry. He tasted blood, but he was mad, too. Her tongue was a war against his, hot and wet, but she stopped breathless against his mouth. Everything was red.

"Arya," he groaned, quiet and rough like it hurt him. Her hands did; he couldn't breathe, just wanted to kiss her. So he did. He wasn't angry anymore, and she tried pushing him back towards the bench, her hands palming at his chest, but he needed her closer, didn't care about anything else for once.

"Lift me," she demanded in the same tone she had earlier. The way she said it now just had him groaning into her throat, her fingers tight in his dark hair, but she wasn't telling him what to do now.

His palms slid over her arse, squeezing her softly just to hear her whine when she pressed her hips to his. "Up," he ordered, moving his hands to grip the backs of her thighs and lift her up to him when she reached.

She wrapped her legs around his arse, rolled her hips over his crotch until she was firmly over his cock. She was so warm between her breeches, she was so close to him with her tongue sliding against his like she was trying to tangle them that his knees buckled, that nothing else mattered but the feel of her beneath him as he laid her gently back against the forge's floor.

The door was open, he remembered, anyone could walk in or hear her moaning as she tightened her legs around his waist to press his groin further up into the heat of her center, but her lips were ghosting along his neck, her whimpering noises delicate to his grunts when his eyes rolled into the back of his head. She was kissing him again, and he couldn't help but buck up into the heat of her breeches, so warm even with all their damned layers of clothes between them.

She was moaning into his mouth, kissing his groans with her tongue, rocking her hips onto his with a quick friction that had him burning, lost in the heady lust of pleasure that didn't think, just needed to feel her rubbing against him all warm and needy and his and _there_ , his cock stiff against her.

"Arya," he whispered again, a moan as she cried out with his name, gripped his shoulders strongly.

"Oh," she said breathlessly, gasping as he pushed even harder into her, letting himself imagine this without clothes, with her all skin and slickness and pink, his name on her mouth again like _that_ when she shivered.

He bit her neck, tasted her skin with a sooth of his tongue, and fell apart as she started to tremble. He peaked, losing control as he thought of fucking her, of the slowness he'd have her melting like this beneath him as they made love, and she was flushed against the floor, pink-cheeked with bright eyes looking spent and warm. Seconds passed like hours, and everything was still red, his body pinning hers down.

"That was us not thinking about it," she said after a long moment, because she was so clever, breathless, closing her eyes for a long while before opening them again.

He didn't know what to say, just held her hip in one hand, pressed his other hand to her cheek before pushing back her hair. He hadn't thought about it; she was right. He felt like fire, and he liked this side of relief where doubts and inhibitions were far from his mind.

There was just her, the open forge door, and the winds gushing in cool air, freezing him so he nestled into her comfortably (not for once, but for _now_ ) his face buried in her neck.

"Arya," he said more strongly than he had in the heat of their ardor, "Arya."

"Gendry," she breathed, her eyes closing again as she relaxed, didn't seem this muddle of emotions shaking within her in her release anymore. She was still so beautiful, he couldn't breathe, sticky and red.

"Arya."


	22. Some Ruin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And she feels so hazy like she's wearing a veil, like she's flying or swimming or floating and barely present or cautious. It's as if everything happens so fast her mind can scarcely catch up, but it passes so slowly, too.

She was sitting at the vanity in her chambers. Here everything felt so warm and earthly, greens and browns and cream colors that trimmed the furnishings in understated elegance: a room befitting the daughter of the Warden of the North.

 _A king by a different name_ , she thinks or remembers like the kings that die too early or never become king ever, but not at all, not when she feels so hazy like she's wearing a veil, like she's flying or swimming or floating and barely present or cautious. It's as if everything happens so fast her mind can scarcely catch up, but it passes so slowly, too. So slowly that she can count each freckle faintly dusting Sansa's cheeks and nose, see each wrinkle smiling around her mouth and welcoming the grey hairs elegantly tracing through red.

She can even smell the faintest touch of cinnamon, a breath of a scent so warm and softly spiced and familiar that it's Lady Catelyn and her delicate, strong hands combatting the tangles in Arya's chestnut hair.

Her mother isn't Sansa at all, and she's telling her that she's beautiful, that she'll remember today forever, that it's all hers and she's so sorry.

She doesn't do anything but turn and kiss her mother's cheeks in a soft brush of her prettily painted lips, and it'd be heartbreaking that she can't remember if this is truly what her mother smelled like if her arms didn't feel the same curled tightly around her.

And oh, how Catelyn prayed and prayed for a child with the North in his or her blood since all she gave to Ned were Tullys a bright shadow away from the bastard son that looked just like Eddard and the Northern kings of old. She just didn't know there'd be a price for a wolf child, though it didn't matter here -- Aunt Lyanna and Uncle Rhaegar had arrived with Cousin Jon moons ago with half of the Seven Kingdoms following.

Royal weddings were still the joy of the realm, so Cat just brushed and brushed her daughter's hair, held her as the nerves slowly set into iron cold blood.

A direwolf slowly padded into her room, not Nymeria, no, but the soft, slight gray wolf with light blue eyes wasn't Lady either. While there was everything disconcertingly wrong and frightening about a wolf that wouldn't howl, this was different. She thought of Sansa.

Maybe this was Sansa now like the tapping of a beak against her window could be Bran and could be what their lives may have been.

She came from her dream slowly, wakefulness taking hold of her gently as her eyes opened and the smell of cinnamon disappeared where it lingered, just reminding her that she couldn't remember if her mum smelled like the spices or not.

She didn't know why Sansa hadn't been there, but then some inclination she remembers has her thinking it'd been her wedding day as mother brushed her hair, so she wonders about Gendry instead, thinks it might be Bran that invaded her sleep like he used to.

The fire still crackles, she can hear it from beyond the curtain separating this room from the smithy, and it sounds strong. It must still be early in the night if it hasn't worn down to ashes yet, or late if Gendry stoked it back to life a little while ago.

She knows he's awake. He hasn't said anything since she stirred, but his breaths don't sound calm and deep. He's awake, he's probably been awake, and while she stretches, curls onto her side with her (his) smoky pillow warm beneath her cheek so she can watch as much of his face as she can see in the dark, he's just laying flat on his back, his eyes focused up to the patch ceiling.

He's tense and awkward. He isn't touching her.

Something bitter inside her realizes that she's cold from not touching him directly, but then she can't keep herself from laughing at the incredulity and pessimism souring her towards him. He's probably afraid to touch her, she thinks, and she might be stupid, but she just keeps laughing in quiet chortles steadily growing louder.

He tilts his head to her, quiet annoyance and intrigued fascination, a stretch of his arm up so his knuckles faintly brush against hers with the closest he's gotten to her all night. "What're you laughing at?"

"You," and it's mostly the truth, but he makes a face barely visible in the night, a scowl, and he's inching just a smidgen further from her like they hadn't been closer than close on the forge floor hours ago. He looks to her again with those eyes that shouldn't be this bright in the cover of the dark, and she stops laughing at the intensity she sees resting there. "What?" she whispers.

"You," he says. He licks his lips, stares back up to the ceiling.

"Oh."

"Yeah."

"Gendry? You're not.. regretting it, are you?" She sounds less accusing and demanding than she'd have liked to. She turns so she's on her back, space still distanced between them. She can feel him staring at her.

"No. No, I'm not. I just keep thinkin' that highborn ladies shouldn't be treated like that," he admits lowly. Lifted and pushed to the dirty floor, bucked up against as if by some lusty greenboy.

She wants to deny that, but imagining what her sister's (or mother's) reaction to her stained clothes and teeth-marked neck intimate tryst just tells her they wouldn't think it proper. Even if they should. Mayhaps more highborn ladies ought to be treated that way, she definitely thinks. They'd be happier and pleased and rubbing their thighs together now to stop the burn of thinking about it.

So. "Well," she starts, sensing the fret of his brows, that pained look he gets when he's thinking on what is or isn't right. "..You did it right."

He's silent a beat; the fire's the only sound around them until his laughter drowns it out. Loud, hard, and cackling. "Arya," he gasps like he's choking, laughing as he reaches out, "come here."

She has to, and so she willingly does, stretching and curling into his open arms and partially rolling atop him. "Have you done that before?" she asks not-so innocently, sighing into his neck.

His beard rasps against her cheek, and he shakes with more quiet laughter. "No, I haven't."

"How many girls have you kissed?"

"A few," he murmurs. "Only a couple that matter, though." A touch of jealousy hits her eyes, but it's not like he saw. He just waits for her to get all defensive, to demand who. "Girl named Arya," but she just shrugs. She knew she was the last on his list like she knew he'd tell her anything without her having to ask.

"Lady Arya of House Stark, sister to The Lord of Winterfell," he continues idly. He felt the corner of her mouth twitch in the dark. "Some woman that gets all warm and soft when -- aye, she scoffs just like that -- I call her my darling."

"She doesn't like it," she interrupts, but he knows she does and laughs when she nuzzles into his throat with her nose.

"Does, too."

"Mmm."

"She makes noises like that sometimes, too." He can't help it; he's grinning now, and this is a habit he can fall into. "Just sounds more pleased, like she did earlier," but now he's thinking about it again. Sleep'll be damn near impossible.

\- -- - -- -

"Oh, I'm sorry," she started, stumbling into the wall of the corner she turned, "I didn't --"

"See me," said the Imp cheerily. "I gathered as much."

"Sorry," she repeated, awkward as she stood there. "I didn't know you were still in Winterfell."

Well, she knew where he'd been everyday since his arrival, but oh, well.

"I didn't know you'd left Winterfell's forge."

His mismatched eyes were too diplomatic. Knowledgable. She didn't like it. "Right, then," she began, gesturing. "I have to be somewhere else, so if you'll be kind enough to move, milord."

"Actually," he interrupted, "I'd like to tell you about my brother, Ser Jaime."

"The Kingslayer," she said indifferently.

"He's married Lady Brienne of Tarth, had you heard?"

"That -- that was three years ago, wasn't it?"

"It was!" he beamed. It made the scar on his face softer somehow, she hadn't expected that. "He and his lady are settling in Tarth, did you know?" He folded his hands behind his back, kept smirking at her, and gods knew she didn't have time for this.

"But he's the Lord of Casterly Rock," she huffed impatiently, bowing slightly since pfft, curtsies. "No one will like that, but if you'll excuse me, I really need to --"

"Not at all," he said, bowing. "But Tarth revels in his lordship."

She was just halfway down the corridor and didn't hear.

\- -- - -- -

"Arya," Jon greeted when she pushed open the door to his study. He smiled when he saw Needle at he hip. "I was just about to look for you."

"And I wanted to see you," she told him, folding her arms over her chest as she sat down. "What did you want?"

There just weren't any pretenses or pleasant smalltalk when her eyes were so accusing. "To tell you that I plan to leave in a few days."

And oh, that hurt only a little, but she watched him with a vague sense of boredom souring her features. "Why wait so long?"

"Because I need more time to prepare."

"For what?"

"My absence in Winterfell, the two months at the least I'll be away?"

"Why?" she asked him. They were children again, him scowling at her too many questions of an interrogation.

"You know it's a month-long journey to get there, Arya."

"Why don't you just go by dragon?" she sniped, her eyes unimpressed as she held her chin up with her hand.

"Not everyone can make the trip on a single dragon," he explained as patiently as he could. He didn't want to tell her it was because the dragons didn't fancy him much.

He also didn't want to tell her something else, but no one knew about that.

"Who? You and the Imp?"

"And bannermen, mine and his, guards, a cook that he insists we take with us. But one specialized in brewing, not cooking, mind you." He waited for her to snort before he said it, quiet and distracted like his hand through his hair, his haphazard shrug as he skillfully flipped a page in the book covering most of his desk. "And Gendry."

"Alright then," she started, half a smile still on her lips since she hadn't really heard. He held his breath. She was four seconds too slow. "What," she demanded, cold like northern steel. "What?"

"I'm going to ask him if he'll accompany me," he told her, more unsurely than he intended.

"Why is that? So the Queen can behead him? So a boar can best him while he hunts?" Her voice was dry, but no. No. "Jon, he can't go with you."

" _You_ can't go with me," but even his smile didn't make that any better.

"I didn't fucking want to go, Jon. Neither does he."

"How do you know? Have you asked him? Maybe he wouldn't mind seeing King's Landing again."

"Then I'm going." She arched her brows impassively, sat up straighter in her chair.

"But you said you didn't want to," he said slowly, looking at her like she was six years old again.

"I changed my mind," like she said back then when things were easier, when men weren't so fucking stupid. "Do you want to make him a king, then?"

"That's not why --"

"Does the Imp?"

"He wouldn't tell me that even if I asked."

She frowns more deeply at him, but thinking of that knowing sparkle in a coal black eye of wry remarks only verifies his words. She can't frown forever. Mother wouldn't like it, 'sides. "Alright."

"You're alright?" His voice was soft, and he stood up, moved around his desk, sat himself in the chair next to her. "He might say no, still. I just want to suggest it. Lady Shireen thinks it'd be wise, too."

She could frown at Jon forever, actually. She shrugged her shoulder away from where he soothingly pat it and called her _little sister_. She smacked his lightly. "That's not what worries me."

"He says you've been worrying a lot," he said gently, kicking the leg of her chair so she was facing him.

"You two tell the other everything now, don't you?"

"I thought that'd make you happy," he smirked.

"I thought it would, too," she laughed, but just for a moment. "I don't like not being in your confidence, and I don't like not being able to tell you when you're doing something stupid."

"I'm not," he assured, trying to smile. He just didn't sound too sure, so maybe she wouldn't call him out on that lie.

"I'm going to see him," she said instead when he looked lethally serious again and the silence started closing in around them. She just didn't sound too sure, but he didn't say anything about the mark on her neck. They were even, or they'd cross blades soon.

\- -- - -- -

"Oh," he startled, his rough, large hands on her shoulders to steady her. They were at the end of one corridor and at the start of another, and his smile was so bright after walking into her. "I didn't --"

"See me," she told him dryly, leaning against the wall. "What are you doing? I wanted to.. find you." She trailed off near the end, her voice fading in a hint of unsureness since today was a lot like every other day. Like it'd happened but it hadn't and.. oh, gods.

"Feast," he reminded her, and then she could smell the faint trace of soap, see where his hair looked darker where it was wet. "Your brother asked me to 'specially come to this one, ordered me to." He stopped smiling when he saw she wasn't, though, his face dropping instantly to something dark and worried. "What happened? Someone do something?"

"No," she said idly, shifting from foot to foot. "We're walking," and she led him off down the hall, his slow, concerned footsteps trailing behind her.

"Your face doesn't look like that when it's nothing."

"What I'm thinking is awful," she muttered darkly, feeling the grey stone of the walls. "Terrible."

"Arya," he said gently, reaching forward to catch her by the waist, but she moved too quick. "Nothing you say or think or done's awful."

"That's what _you_ think."

He's quiet a beat. "Who else matters?"

"No one," she answered automatically, too automatically, and it feels like memory and being cut by that _fucking_ knife again, like it's churning in her chest and everything's the same but isn't, and she feels so hazy like she's wearing a veil, like she's flying or swimming or floating and barely present or cautious. It's as if everything happens so fast her mind can scarcely catch up, but it passes so slowly, too, a change in time.

She stops walking with one hand held to the wall, one hand on her hip where the pommel of Needle isn't since she's wearing a skirt, and she feels so lost. She can hear the voices from the open doors leading inside the banquet hall. "Gendry," she says.

He's at her side, brushing the hair curtaining her eyes from him away, feeling her forehead tenderly. "Arya," he answers.

"He doesn't want me with him in King's Landing, since if there has to be a Stark left in Winterfell, it'd be Rickon. But he's about the same age Robb was when that was him, and I'm the only one that will talk about it. And I'm the only one that even saw it."

He had almost forgotten that. "It's a different strength," he says like he doesn't really know. Someone hurries past them, so he lowers his voice, steps just barely to the left so her reddening face is shielded by his body from view. "I think," he says again like he doesn't really know, but he isn't stupid. "I think your younger brother could kill any man."

"I think he could, too," she whispers back, her nose scrunching as she fights a weak sniffle. "But if Jon's worried to leave him here alone, that means bad things."

"Arya," he frowns, an order for her to look at him. "Arya," but she's looking past him, towards the doors where a few people are staring at them hunched against a wall. "Arya, honey."

"Gods," she huffs, her eyes an angry flash to his. "You sound like a weak southron boy."

He ignores that, just reaches for her hand because he knows by now that comforting touches calm her like his lame words can't. "You don't have to worry for Rickon, like I know I don't have to worry after you. You can take care of yourself," he smiles, another lie since he's prone to worry anyways. She'll let him have it. "What else are you frettin'?"

"Anything could go wrong, Gendry."

She's back to sounding like he's stupid, squirming out of his grasp as his shoulder hits the hard stone wall. "Anything could," he agrees, calling after her. _No_ , he thinks he hears her say, but she's in between two tables, walking towards the front, curtsying to some lord or lady or whoever. "Arya." He's just behind her now; she stops moving but doesn't turn, and they have to stop fighting like this. "..Come here," he murmurs, because he's not sure what else he has to say.

And they're in the dining hall where everyone can see them, and he is so nervous. It's just stopped mattering since she's turned, since he can see her grey eyes looking paler and more hollow against red cheeks, see Lord Jon Snow watching them from the main table as he just opens his arms like he always does to her, expecting her to fall into them like she always does.

She does, and he doesn't care that everyone's watching the bastard blacksmith hug their lady. Maybe he had to stop caring when he first showed up at the gates of Winterfell screaming for her, but her nose is wet against his tunic, her arms tight around his torso as she clutches him. "Love," he says softly, and she shifts so she steps on the toe of his boot, but he just holds her there in the dining hall, his head bowed so his mouth's at her ear. "This isn't about everything that could go wrong, is it? You're thinking of all the bad things, worryin' for everything that has happened."

Because he _knows_ , but it's like she'd maybe forgotten all of it happened or something. She doesn't know, doesn't really care, just breathes in the faint scent of soap at his sternum with the warm, spiced, smokey smell she loves, like he'd been roasting meat in the kitchens instead of stoking a smithy's fire most of the day.

"I'm not very hungry," she whispers. The conversations have just started getting louder around them again.

"Alright," he says, his hand gentle to her hair, her face, her arms as he steps back slightly, only looking to her. "Where're we going?" But he already knows. She's already leading him out the hall, down three corridors, past the doors, beyond the courtyard, into the middle of the weirwood trees.


	23. Helped You Open Up Your Eyes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When she looks to him, he thinks she understands what he wants to tell her. If she's wondering after memories, they could be here, but a place couldn't bring someone long-gone back. Thoughts did that, and they were always there, so this doesn't matter anything outside of some sort of symbolicnessism since she has it all already, but he doesn't know how to say that. He can't make it sound pretty or serious enough, so mayhaps he won't try -- he just watches the uncertainty flicker in her Stark grey eyes as her cheeks burn redder, and maybe he said it all wrong, oh, no.

"It's not going anywhere," he tells her softly. The Godswood isn't, so he quickens his steps after her fierce strides, hisses when the cold touch of her frozen fingers twine through his. "Slow down."

But she just moves faster, guides him over the overgrowth of chilled roots and loose stones marring the off-beat path. It is going somewhere, far away and out of the slip of her memory where all the trees just look like angry, vengeful trees, no difference from any of them though one specifically is hollow with soft bark and a small patch of pleasant earth surrounding it. It's where she used to sit with her father on grey-sky days the sun would shine over the rest of the kingdoms but leave its bright prosperity and happiness just for them, and she can't find it. She can't see it.

"There's a tree," she tells him just a voice too desperately. "It's somewhere." She sorts her free hand through her hair, tousles the dark locks in aggravation, sees the knuckles of his hand are white where she's holding him too tight. "Sorry," she adds quietly, loosening her grip, but he shakes his head at her.

"There are lots of trees," but isn't that just the most helpful thing he's ever said to her? "Which tree?" he asks her instead of saying something else stupid. She's starting to look frantic as she studies each part of the weirwood, and he turns to study the trees that must have whatever she thinks is missing.

"I can't remember, Gendry."

"Why this tree, then?"

"Because it was important," she snaps, a harshness clouding into her breath as it freezes alongside his. Her cheeks are pinker in the cold, and maybe she regrets the bite in her words, but she's looking so lost again, so small and frail like life was even bigger than she thought it'd be when she was just a child and the rest of her life stretched straight forward and North to the Wall.

"Why was it important?"

He asked so patiently and kindly, she really didn't deserve it. So she stands there in the quiet of the chilly wind, lets him wait until she's trying his patience and he's thinking she hadn't heard. Earth crunches beneath his boots as he turns. The leaves rustle above them. She's losing it.

"I'm not sure," she finally admits, feeling the heat of his gaze stare at her. "I want to be there because it's where I always was with Father, but I can't remember."

And he thinks he understands the desperation peaking into her voice again, but none of that came from finding ancient wood. Her fingers feel nearly brittle as he lifts them, as strong and cold as they are, up to his chest where he can wrap his hands around them to warm them. She doesn't seem to notice, just keeps glancing from tree to tree with her shoulders uncharacteristically starting to sag in frustration or grief.

"Arya," he starts lowly, because he's sure, but he never knows, "your father wasn't the tree in this family, was he?"

When she looks to him, he thinks she understands what he wants to tell her. If she's wondering after memories, they could be here, but a place couldn't bring someone long-gone back. Thoughts did that, and they were always there, so this doesn't matter anything outside of some sort of symbolicnessism since she has it all already, but he doesn't know how to say that. He can't make it sound pretty or serious enough, so mayhaps he won't try -- he just watches the uncertainty flicker in her Stark grey eyes as her cheeks burn redder, and maybe he said it all wrong, oh, no.

"No," she says, her voice cracking and her nose scrunching up. But when he thinks she'll start to weep, she just laughs something hysterical and sane like it all makes sense, so maybe that's enough for now.  
"Bran's not a tree either," she sputters, leading him off again just because he'll follow her anywhere like he always does, her frozen hand still locked with his heated one.

But maybe she understood what he didn't say anyways -- leading him back towards the courtyard where it looks like the sun's left them all early. But when she doesn't step towards the smithy or the entrance to the halls of Winterfell, he thinks he's got quite a bit of work left for him.

\- -- - -- -

He's not really the lord he thinks he is, is he?

Jon watches the smallfolk and highfolk and bannermen and everyone else laugh and dine and drink and be rowdy. The first grand feast at Winterfell after it was just a small shadow of its former glory shocked him. There were those declaring him their King in the North, but the finery he hadn't expected.

It was as if there had been a war, aye, depression and poverty hit the people of the North just as hard as the snows and the cold and the dead would have, but when he was fighting for Westeros, for the Wall, for the Watch, it seemed all so far away. Snow was falling with entire mountains in the distance, they were losing men like they'd lost the King Stannis of House Baratheon, the only man to keep him aware of the news of the realm and the Dragon Queen birds whispered about, and it was like a frozen tundra of devastation, wasn't it?

They still called him "Lord Snow" on nights when their fingers were go blue and black with the cold around the fire with a weak ring of laughter to aspire some cheer since none of them were sleeping, but even as Lord Commander, he wasn't the lord he thought he could be.

The one he always wanted to be, for having wished it so long, the reality was as different and brazen as the dragon's fire he was caught in. It hadn't burned him, and the Red Woman had her piece to say about it before she was put to the sword. Others had more to say, too, especially the Dornish and the Queen's old advisor, the one who spoke about promised princes, and if that's what Eddard Stark had been protecting him from all those years, then, well.

He could at least have been allowed to sit in on more feasts so he'd know what to expect when Tyrion Lannister was messing about with kitchengirls and the Lady Shireen had been seen seconds before until she'd just vanished. With Rickon. And no one knew where Arya and Gendry had gone off to, but he had Ghost's eyes to look through, had the smile of a red-haired girl's smirked words and condescending insults aimed at him, because no, he wasn't the lord he could be, but he could have been a different one.

It's all what he thinks about it, maybe, like the words he hears from her in mind and the understanding that maybe this is why his father had seemed so solemn all the time.

He bows his head to Lord Tyrion when he cheers him with a mug of mead, catches the last line of a pining joke one of his bannermen said and laughs, sees her in his head always where she ought to be next to him, iron will instead of an iron throne.

He sees the Lady Baratheon re-enter the hall with one side of her face flushed, Rickon following after her looking like he's shouting at something -- someone, there's a glimpse of his sister and Gendry beyond the doors before they close, and he isn't the Lord he should be.

If he was, mayhaps he'd have sent (that makes him snort into his drink while his men laugh at him) Arya to the Silent Sisters, Rickon to.. well, nowhere, because who'd have him? But that thought grounds him like nothing else does, and maybe he isn't the Lord he could be, but he's the one that's best for his family and his people, and that's enough for him when the cold winds of change start riling through the kingdoms.

He feels lots of things, then, but it seems like he's doing it right, so he smiles again when Lord Lannister tips his mug at him and shouts something he can't hear.

\- -- - -- -

"Where are we going now?" he laughs, a step behind her as she keeps surging them forward.

"Special place," she tells him distractedly, and he only has an instant to worry if it's moments ago happening all over again before she's whirled around and facing him. "Were they kissing?"

"Rickon and La-- Shireen?" he frowns, glancing back towards the courtyard where they'd walked into them. It just isn't in sight; Arya walks mighty fast when she gets determined. "No."

"You don't sound sure," she laughs, a breath and a gust of fresh air as it whispers around them, has him shivering in his boots.

"He's young, though."

"Didn't you want to kiss girls when you were thirteen?"

"I did," he mutters, his cheeks a red from her instead of the cold.

"So I'm not the only one?"

"The only one that matters," he answers truthfully, and that or his smile distracts her long enough for the air to get cooler as the rest of their daylight slowly seeps away.

"Rickon and Shireen?" she blurts out in a rush. "He hasn't said anything to me on it, just that he fancies himself in love with her." She waits a moment, a smile slowly inching onto her lips as he reaches for her and tightens her cloak around her shoulders. The world isn't spinning like it had been since that dreaded talk with Jon, and now, _now_ is good.

She can breathe, or she can't, because he's grinning at her with dimples diveting his beard, a cheeky set to his jaw as he says, "We could be kissing right now," and gods, she's tempted with his eyes smiling down at her, his red nose as he lowers his head, laughs against her forehead with a kiss.

"We could," she agrees, but she needs to go where they were going before anything else, no matter how much she loves the unabashed side of him that kisses her still with both eyes closed and any sense beyond them shut out to each other. "We could," she has to say again more thoughtfully, because it looks like his eyes are getting darker, and oh, gods. "Later."

He groans, but she's leading them off again, and he recognizes the darkness of the tunnels as what she only ever spoke about: the crypts.

"You know they say some of this is haunted?" she asks as idly as she asked him to start smithing without a shirt. He could brave the scarce burns for it, even if it took him a moment to understand why.

"No," he answers. R'llhor keep the torches lit, just in case.

"You don't have to be scared," but her shadowed smirk says otherwise though it's her that holds his hand to her more tightly.

They pass the faces of the statues and the embodied Starks long-since passed, and maybe this is a lot like the Godswood.

"Do you know anything about some of them?" he whispers, warily like a loud voice could rouse the dead from their peaceful rest.

"Some. I didn't listen to most of the stories when I was young."

She doesn't say more so he doesn't -- they just walk through few twists and bends of poorly lit stone walls until they reach what she's searching for, but he already knows. He doesn't recognize the woman, not really, yet he can see the resemblance the elder part of the realm gossiped about.

"Lyanna Stark," he says, looking at the words like he could have read them.

"Don't tell me that we look alike," she whispers suddenly, lethally should he not decide to listen. "We don't," and even if she's convincing herself more than him or everyone laid to rest in the crypts, he doesn't understand why the King Robert who lusted after so many women lust after and loved this one so much.

Or maybe he understands more than he thinks, and suddenly it's the both of them in these crypts with something to prove.

"What did we decide?" he demands quietly, "about them?" Lyanna and Robert. They hadn't mentioned them since last night.

"We decided no."

"Alright."

"I want to believe she did love Rhaegar Targaryen."

"Arya," he says, reveling in the smoothness of her palm against his, her rough fingertips curling around his hand where she'd likely remove it soon. "You can believe that when everyone was saying terrible things about 'em for most your life, but you won't believe that anyone changed now. Can change now."

She didn't let go of his hand, just nearly did. A whisper of their palms whisking away until they were almost apart, her vice-like grip clawing into his fingers at the last second.

It was strange, a pinprick of her nails into the back of his hand because his words were too smart, too pointed, far too right in the truth she didn't want to face yet. So she just kept staring at the statue.

"It's so ridiculous."

"What is?"

"That I get called a horseface just for others to go on about how pretty I am," she laughs, or tries, too. "Nothing changed."

Sure, nothing changed. She wasn't pretty; she was beautiful, but he knew better or stupid than to tell her so when her fretted brows were sloped down like that, hating what they saw. "They're just stone, I guess," he nods, but he knows about how it goes living in shadows that stretch and loom to cover everywhere plannin' on taking a step, and he could probably hate Lyanna Stark for Arya, too. Even if she was Jon's mum.

The ancient dead could just be stone, too, if she was thinking like they were wooden trees that meant a world where she couldn't relive things that weren't what she was trying to hold onto in her memories. He just didn't know how to reiterate what he thought and what he couldn't say in the first place, so he kept holding her hand as she stared up to the impassive face in silence.

"I didn't know him, though," she finally whispers, finally admits to her biased judgement. "Rhaegar. Maybe he was good."

But he just watches her laugh next, so prittering loud in the quiet where the dead tried to sleep. They all knew Rhaegar had been a good man when others spoke about him. That was more good than what others said about the ones she wanted to condemn with Needle.

"Maybe," he agrees, but she's leading him a few paces down, and he doesn't need to be told that the commanding visage chiseled in a tender respect and grief is Lord Eddard Stark.

His eyes don't look like eyes, but it's like they've seen so much still. Hard and cold and stone but _warm_ , full of something he'd probably want to call despair if he used them fancy words, if the statue didn't look so at peace.

"Do you feel it?" he wants to know, his tone so low she wouldn't have heard if he weren't standing so close to her.

But she doesn't know how to answer. She feels the prestige and the righteous goodness and the warmth that made him her father, but she doesn't feel like it's that at all. It's different, and it's light, and she just wants to fall into his arms like she's eight and covered in cuts and mud from brambles because she followed Robb and Theon around when they asked her not to. And he'd smile like he was remembering the past, but it wouldn't be so bittersweet this time.

It'd be back then and not now, but they really weren't the same thing anymore, and the stone of his face was cold when she touched it. "Do you think he'd be happy with our lives now?"

But who was he to answer, and how could he? He didn't really know, but he had an idea of what had to be true. So he said yes, of course, watched her eyes soften before they closed and her hand slid from his as she hit her knees at her father's feet.

"Alright." She sounds like she's crying if she ever does weep, but he knows she did once in her sleep before she jolted awake after kicking him off the bed. It's just her head that has to sort through everything she's feeling, all the guilt or regret or anger or grief she didn't lay to rest with her dead, but the flicker of her smile tinged in torchlight as she looks up to him in something like the peace he can feel in these tombs has him hoping she'll make it out of this yet. "Come here," she whispered, her slim fingers outstretched for his as she bid him down next to her on his knees. "He needs to meet you proper."

\- -- - -- -

"Lord Stark," she simpers, but she isn't mad, not truly.

"Rickon," he corrects, and it's strange to hear his voice so clear and flawless and insightful, almost, when it can get so ragged and guttural and wild until it's nothing.

"Lord Rickon, then."

They've had this conversation again and again, like she's being coy if she weren't such a stickler for propriety when he acts the part of the lordling he is instead of the king-boy-man she sometimes has to coax into eating when mealtimes turn around.

"Shireen," and she's blushing already, the right side of her face a scarlet pink as she brushes lint from her skirt, curls a hand through her hair, meets his eyes until she can't because he's looking at her in a way that's too much.

"Rickon," she whispers, because he steps closer with his hands on her shoulders. He's gotten so tall for his age, his manners so brazen, and half a grin at the wry corner of his mouth with " _'tis a good match, truly_ " etched into her mind as he says it. With a clear of her throat, she's all serious again, more of Stannis's daughter in the eyes of the few stragglers of the feast warily eyeing her scars. "I'm returning to Storm's End in a few days, you know," she says, a laugh in the chatter, a grin at his frown.

"I could go with you."

"And what would you do there?" she laughs again, enjoying this just a little too much since they've started walking around the grounds side by side.

"See you every morning, every noon, every night," he easily answers. Maybe he'd learn more about lording a castle, though Winterfell still wasn't what he wanted. Maybe spacious keeps and decorated corridors and lavish chambers weren't for him -- his home was already more plain than any other hold in Westeros, if he remembered Sansa saying that correctly.

She just smiled when she said it. Their father would have smiled, too, and he's suddenly thinking of that as Shireen steps just a pace away from him but remains at his side, proper since it's beyond nightfall, her skirts swishing around her ankles as they meander aimlessly and talk so much about nothing, and his father wasn't meant to rule the North either. Did he ever want to?

He'd ask Jon later, but tell him he still didn't want to regardless. Maybe a life of dark-haired children with their blue eyes could be nice a few years into the future. Beyond the Wall where existence was easier and no one bothered with propriety when the wind sounded alive as it bit at noses and cheeks and fingers.

He'd rather be that instead, so he smiles at all the right moments, nods as Shireen prattles on expertly because he knows when not to interrupt her, tells her one day, because maybe one day, and maybe one day.

"Mayhaps," she says like she's a diplomat, scheming and hoping the best for her future upon years and years of moments just like this.

It's liberating.

\- -- - -- -

It's not like he expected her to cry. Not truthfully.

He just watched her shoulders get tense and rigid as the words she spoke of her father led to sharp memories that hurt her until they didn't, until her breaths relaxed slowly and more of her head came back just like the present, until her nails left marks like crescent moons into his hands from where she held so tight.

She kisses them now, a sweet kiss to each mark she hadn't intended since they've time to kill and Jon to annoy while they wait outside his study.

"I'm sorry," she says, a kiss with a laugh making her sound anything but.

"Right," he mutters. He's a loud yawn as he stretches, his arms obnoxiously and impressively rippling in her face. "Didn't sleep good."

She nods, the question written off her face when she leans back against the door and studies him. "Because I wasn't there?" She did stay in her own room last night, curled up where she was alone staring at the sword-slashes carved into her bedposts and trying to see things differently as they happen again. Better.

But he just snorts (like a bull), the back of his neck gone red. "No."

Yet she knows that look, the blue corners of his eyes glancing to her when he's caught in a lie she won't believe. She murmurs that yes, "Of course," rolls her eyes when he looks off in relief and yawns again to the ceiling. Everything in him seems so warm, and she's almost tempted, _almost_.

\- -- - -- -

 _My dearest brothers and sister,_ the letter reads, set discarded on a table where it'd been forgotten about like this was a routine already, that such words of happiness (and wry wit) are frequent. Or will be.

 _How silly of me, I hadn't thought Willas would be so caught up in treaties and scrolls and plans already,_ she wrote.

But what did she expect? The roses didn't fall far from trees, or however that happened. She goes on to to say how he seems a fair lord. A good man, though they all knew so much, but words and whispers aren't living it in the flesh, perhaps.

_Margaery is so happy to be returning home, but she says she misses Winterfell dearly and longs to be acquainted with her good-siblings. Especially you, Jon._

_I can't say I know where we are right now, but I know it's far from Winterfell and Highgarden both._ (There was a jape from Rickon or Arya, Jon didn't know, that Sansa just hasn't left her and Willas's tent.)

 _It has been a short couple weeks so far, and I do miss all of you terribly,_ she went on to write. _Or not so much anymore, just always, but these days have been full of happiness._

She didn't say much, as hollow and plain as those words were, but it was Sansa. Happiness was no small feat and accomplishment when the light in her Tully blue eyes hadn't twinkled in her laughter as often as it used to.

She did end her letter with something else, though, a phrase no one but her sister understood.

\- -- - -- -

"Why do you always make Gendry wait outside the doors?" Jon asks her, finally.

"You intimidate him," she says offhand, quick as a beat to her brother's slightly pleased face before pfft, like _hell_. "He doesn't mind. There's a cat out there."

"Don't they make him sneeze?"

"Yes," she shrugs, casual and bored as he stares at her. "But Knife will keep the direwolves away from him."

"I won't," he starts just to silence himself, a frown creasing his stern features like he's being unfair or just or both. "Did you tell him I'd like him to come to King's Landing before the Queen?" he questions instead.

"No, but you can, and I still want to go."

"And I've told you no."

She just laughs. Loudly. "That doesn't matter."

"Arya," he sighs. His hair might as well be greying, his tongue lame if no one listens to him anyways. "Why?"

She tightens the leather cord binding her braid and straightens a sheet of parchment spanning across his desk. It's incentive, a distraction since Jon had to straighten the papers since she knocked them crooked, but she's really just trying to think tactfully. To pick her words carefully since she knows. "I've thought a lot about it."

"Even if you don't accuse the better part of the city of conspiring treason against the Starks, I don't think you could stand in Dany's --" She scowls. "-- court and not provoke anyone when they've proved their reform."

"You sound like a lord," she complains, slumping further into the too-plushy chair.

"I am," he reminds her gently, his tone the same as seconds ago like he wasn't upset or angry with her hand and attitude in life, just almost envious of it since he couldn't carry on with flippant, errant behavior, wild as her hair as she fidgets with it again. "You don't need to act like a lady," he soothes, "but I don't think it'd be wise if you went, sweetling."

"But I have to if he is," she says, sounding petulant and desperate all over again. It's not the fear she felt, though, the panic that churned and wret her insides the days before. It's just. Gendry.

"Why?" Jon sighs. And he looks so old. So tired. But he still tries for all of them, and the goodness he inherited from Eddard Stark makes this harder than it should be when his matching eyes watch the idea start to form in her own.

"Because," she murmurs, and it's a fight to keep holding his gaze, to convince herself that it isn't a lie when it all but is. It'd have its advantages, for them and Jon, protection, maybe, because she wasn't free of that caution the other Starks should have had. But it'd keep them all together.

Especially now. She doesn't bite her lip. "Because," she repeats, cold-struck iron in her tone, "we married in the Godswood the other evening. We're wed," and she can see the color stain his face, hear her own pulse heavy in her skin while she tries to steady herself. "Where he goes, I go."


	24. All Over Again

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I was gonna wait for Jon to ask him something," he said when they'd slowed somewhere long past the kitchens. He was smiling, though, so it couldn't be too important.
> 
> "Well," she beamed, smiling bright up at him. "You won't ever talk to Jon again."

The silence stretched between them.

Jon stared at her, and she busied herself with looking everywhere but at him like it didn't matter. She casually leaned back into her chair, folded her arms in front of her chest, counted slowly to thirty. "I know you heard me right."

"You.. you what," he finally said, his throat tight. "You wed?"

"That's what I told you," she nodded, impassive as she studied his face. When he didn't look angry, she took a deep breath.

"Arya, but when? Why didn't you tell anyone?"

"About a week ago?" she lied, because what he didn't know wouldn't hurt him. She smoothed the pleats of her sleeve. "In the Godswood, we said our vows."

"With a.. witness? Was anyone there?" he wanted to know.

"Just the gods as our witnesses, all we need in the North."

But that wasn't _entirely_ true. At least not for her, Jon thought. "Nothing official? Why didn't you tell anyone?" he repeated, sounding hurt. Well.

"What happens between us only matters to us, doesn't it? Jon." She took that patronizing tone he was just speaking to her with, and he rolled his eyes at her, still caught in trying to decipher what he was feeling. "It's not like you can be surprised."

"I remember when you didn't want to marry anyone."

"I was eight," she laughed. "People change, don't they?"

But his eyes changed when he looked at her, blanketed grey soft and confused, and she realized too late she said what he'd been trying to tell her. "They do."

"I don't mean --" she started, but he interrupted her with a hand held up.

"Let's not fight about that. I wish you'd told me, Arya. I wouldn't have stopped you."

"I was going to," she said, but she wasn't sure if that was a lie. Gendry said he wanted them to marry proper, not really knowing their Godswood wedding was but wasn't, mostly wasn't, maybe, but they'd both talked to Jon. Everything had to lead to this talk now, even if it wasn't traditional and proper. "I mean, we did ask you."

"I thought I'd at least be there," he huffed. But he looked mostly sullen about that, like a typical upset older brother if he were normal, so she just jabbed at his arm instead of patting him reassuringly and hurried for the door.

"Arya," Gendry grinned, bright and too loud before she could close the door. They had to get somewhere far away from Jon.

She didn't acknowledge him openly, just told the cat to shoo away and reached for Gendry's arm, starting to drag him through different hallways. Left, left, through those doors, another left. Right, past more doors.

"I was gonna wait for Jon to ask him something," he said when they'd slowed somewhere long past the kitchens. He was smiling, though, so it couldn't be too important.

"Well," she beamed, smiling bright up at him. "You won't ever talk to Jon again."

And then she was tugging him beyond more doors, and really now, when did his life become getting dragged around by this girl again? "What'd you do to him?" he wondered aloud instead.

"Why do you think I did something? Maybe he did."

"Sure," he scoffed. "What was it?"

Another set of doors, and she finally released his hand. This looked like the armory, just in a lot of disrepair, not the one they'd sent most of his work to. "Well," she started again, a flicker of an instant in the quiet room to gather her thoughts. "I told him we'd wed."

"..You what?"

"We're married."

"What?" he whispered, looking pained and confused as he rubbed the back of his neck. "You and Jon?"

" _What?_ " she sputtered, scowling at him. "No, you stupid. Me and you."

"But we're not," he said slowly, still not getting it.

"We are, though," she said, a frown starting to tug down her lips as she studied her sleeve again. "It was a wedding, in the Godswood."

"But not proper," he protested gently, reaching up to curl a lock of her hair around his finger. "It was us, but that wasn't it. I want it done the proper way for you."

"What about what I want?"

"What you deserve," he corrected with a boyish grin, and she couldn't fight that. Not when he was including himself in that, the stupid. "And Jon'll have to be there, anyways."

"What? Why's it matter who's there?"

"He's your family, Arya."

"And now what? You'll expect me to wear a proper gown and everything?" She rolled her eyes and shook her hair away from his hand.

"You could wear a ruddy potato sack for all I care," he snorted derisively, reaching for her cheek instead, feeling her soft skin with his rough thumb. "I just want your family there. I want it done right."

"It'll be done right if it's with you," she murmured, and when his smile pressed to his eyes and warmed them, warmed her stomach, it was the proper time to continue. "But. Gendry."

He just looked at her like he was delirious or happy or suffocating, probably the first, using his fingers to tenderly brush her hair from her eyes.

"Gendry." He seemed to focus, but she knew he wasn't concentrating when he looked like that. " _Love_ ," she said like sugar, sweet and breathy, and he saw through that in an instant, started scowling at her.

"Don't do that. What is it?"

"As far as Jon knows, we're married, alright? So don't do or say anything that'll have him think otherwise, maybe."

"Maybe," he reiterated, as flippant as she mumbled it. "Arya, that's a lie. We're not wed by any law."

"The gods' law," she just had to point out, sighing loudly when he turned away, stalked around the armory.

"Can you tell me why, at least?" He whirled around, his hand flexing around an aged warhammer he'd picked up from a cast.

"Or what? You'll strike me with that?" she teased, laughing lightly.

"Don't tempt me," but his face was lighter with that instant he smiled before the present caught up to him. "Why, though? Why do you tell him now? What if he makes me leave Winterfell?"

He sounded like a fifteen year old boy again, and oh, what that did to her heart. " _Love_ ," she called him again, because she hadn't said it since that night, and it didn't sound as mocking as moments ago, and he looked like he believed her. "I told him we were wed now so he'd let me leave for King's Landing with you. He wants you to go," she nodded, seeing the question on his face. "And he can't make you leave Winterfell."

"He can," he sighed. "He's the one that asked me to stay and smith."

"Oh," she snarked, dimples vivid in her cheeks as she teased him. "You've stayed all this time for Jon, then. Glad I found that out before we were married for true."

"Arya."

"No, Gendry." She groaned loudly. "Gods, I don't want to call you stupid again."

"Keep tellin' yourself those lies." His laugh was loud in the quiet room, and they were just themselves again. He set the hammer back where he'd found it, flexed his hands into fists before loosening them. "Why am I being stupid this time?"

"Because I told Jon that a ten year old girl wanted you to smith for her brother, and he had to see it happen."

He waited 'till that resonated around him with the silence and the old steel as quiet as she moved in front of him, and it'd been her that gave him a place here? He figured, but she'd been so angry with him. She even -- "You told me to leave," he told her defensively, remembering.

"You're just mad because you don't know what else to feel," she said, rolling her eyes snidely.

He's another laugh, bright and loud and tenderly mocking. "That was all you, m'lady."

"Maybe." _Don't call me that._

"I'm still not letting Jon think we're married when we ain't. I won't live my life as a eunuch, Arya." But a second too slow, realization hit him when he quickly took hold of her arms. "We haven't even made the marriage proper!"

"You keep saying that, but --"

"No! Like.. fancy word, what is it? Consummation?"

It was her turn to stare at him like he was stupid, so she did. "Gendry," she began, but no, that didn't sound right. " _Ser_ Gendry. Are you telling me you want our marriage annulled because it hasn't been consummated?"

He muttered something that sounded like a curse. "We aren't even married like that."

"We could be," she said, flippant and offhand.

And she can see it in her mind:

_"Take off your shirt," she'd tell him, watching the play of muscles in his chest as he does. His skin tanned and warm and glistening with sweat from the heat of the forge, his muscled abdomen a path of dark hair skimming beneath the waist of his trousers._

_She can see where her teeth had marked his neck a couple days ago and remember the taste of his skin on her tongue, but she can't see why he's hesitating with the laces of his pants._

_"You're sure about this?" he'd probably ask. And it'd annoy her because he wasn't naked yet, but it'd also show how sweet she knew he could be, and she couldn't complain of sweet, tender touches when it'd feel like it did, his warm, rough hands gentle to the curve of her back, the hollow of her throat, the insides of her thighs. Her --_

Oh, gods.

"Gendry." She cleared her throat for emphasis to prove she had been listening, that her mind wasn't wondering to places she really needed to be in now, but he was smirking at her like he knew. So damn that rugged curl of his mouth and his stubble. Damn.

"..Take off your shirt," she mumbled just because she could, because she might as well try, right? He just laughed so lowly she could feel it in her bones as he wrapped his arms around her, ducked down, pressed his lips to her forehead.

"Maybe soon."

"Promise?"

His smile was lazy and warm with laugh(stress)lines crinkling at his eyes. "Nah. But I'll have you know I won't lie to Lord Jon if he asks me directly."

"He's going to think we've really done it."

She sounds like he's being stupid again, so he stops his hand from reaching for hers, just to spite her. "We bicker like an old married pair," he grumbled, taking care to hold the door for her.

Her eyes were light, but she tried to keep her face neutral and annoyed. "We'd probably kill each other. Or at least, I'd kill you."

"Oh, would you now?" he said snidely, gruff, not looking the least bit as angry as he sounds. "Strength wins out more oft than not, doesn't it?" Walking in front of her, he consciously maybe flexed his arms as he stretched.

"Not if you're --" That was a wall she nearly walked into. "Asking. Then you're clearly not skilled enough to best me in a fight."

But he's thinking of the flush in her cheeks, her breathless gasps below him, his tongue against her throat telling her to yield, and he shouldn't be thinking on it, nope.

"Your ears are red."

"Shut up," he snapped. "You have to go outside first just in case, though," he added. Quiet, and she was laughing at him. "Your brothers might have their wolves waiting."

"I might have Nymeria waiting," she murmured, a wink as she brushed past him.

"She still like to wander off?"

"Not if I need her to eat blacksmiths, you know." She slipped her fingers into his left hand, feeling the scars Ghost grazed into his skin. "I'll protect you," she promised, squeezing.

Grip tight, they made their dimly-lit way towards the smithy, and it was comfortable, companionable silence until they made it in and he was absently unlacing the ties of his jerkin with just his tunic beneath. She started giggling like a madwoman, grinning from ear to ear.

"What?" he asked, a quiet, confused laugh, his hair slightly ruffled from his jerkin.

"Take off your shirt," she tried again.

But he just sighed at her though he was biting back a grin, and they were just like an old married pair already.

\- -- - -- -

"You left just a moment ago!" he calls the next day, loud over the fire and the clanking of the door as it's opened. When he looks up with a pleased smile, sweat and soot everywhere, he's only a little worried that it's not Arya. "Lord Rickon, Lady Shireen!"

"Don't!" Shireen hurries, but she's too late. "You don't have to kneel for us, we're family."

"Family," Rickon repeated, sounding far too threatening for a boy.

Brushing the dirt from his knees, Gendry straightened. "Beg pardon," he started, awkwardly looking between the two. "Is there anything I can do for you?"

"No," his cousin smiled sweetly. "We just wanted to see you."

"In tact."

"..Uh."

"Rickon," she chided. "Don't frighten him." Turning to Gendry, she added, "Don't let him frighten you," but he was thinking how he'd say that about Arya when she was a skilled assassin.

How adorable.

"I won't," he laughed lightly. "I have the bolts set to repair your door, Rickon, was just waiting on you to give me a time."

"Whenever you can," the tall boy assured him.

And that was like one of those moments where you could catch a glimpse of who someone might be in the future, but this was something more ethereal, it seemed. Rickon wasn't some scraggly, freckled young man playing at being a boy when he was a wolf, his eyes were older, wiser, smiling still a soft blue with that natural look that made him like a ruler, fair and sovereign and years into the future, and _oh_ , Gendry thought, watching Shireen absently try to straighten Rickon's sleeve as he cajoled her with a hand. Storm's End.

"I --" he began, watching two sets of eyes focus on him. "I need to see Jon," and so he was quickly gone, bowing in polite courtesy.

\- -- - -- -

"Gendry," Jon sighed.

Gendry was suddenly rethinking his swift decision to tell Lord Stark what he was thinking back in the forge. He couldn't keep holding his gaze. "This isn't about that," he said quickly, irrelevantly, meaning their marriage because Jon looked both disappointed and vaguely happy.

"Why does being wed matter so little to both of you?" he suddenly laughed, shaking his head. "She said it like it didn't matter either. You two certainly are a pair."

Arya was certainly a pain, and they were definitely not married by any legal standards that'd give her and any of their children his name, but he wasn't about to say all of this to him. "Storm's End," he spoke clearly.

"You've decided?"

"No, no, not.. me," he frowned, trailing off. Some words just weren't easy. "I'm going to sound like a madman," he laughed, because making it seem like a joke made it less serious, "but I saw it? Rickon, years from now, it could be. As a lord and a ruler, and it looked like he took to it like you say he would, like your brother."

Silently, Jon watched him like he was seeing it, too, and the quiet stretched as his frown deepened, as Gendry grew just a bit uncomfortable. "He's said he doesn't want Winterfell."

Yes, but Gendry had his thoughts on that, too. It was probably the same as why Arya could talk herself in wanting to leave sometimes. "Storm's End, I meant, with Shireen," he told him, lowering his head.

"You think he'd want that?" Like all of Jon's obligations were seeing his siblings happy. "I'll talk with him," he assured Gendry, because he really didn't know the truth of it. He didn't even know if what he saw was just his imagination or not. Probably was. "You can tell me of your wedding, if you like."

Jon's eyes were pointed staring at him, but it was like seeing the threat in Arya's if all this fell down on her. "..No," he said slowly, tightly. "In all respect, m'lord, Jon, we were thinking to keep it, uh. Personal." That didn't sound like a lie, or at least, none that Jon hadn't been planning to tell the Queen, anyways. "I do love her. Have for years," like he'd been saying it for years, and he couldn't stop his smile from stupidly pressing to his lips.

Jon told him that he knew he did, knew she did, too. "I'm happy for the both of you," he promised softly, letting Gendry leave. He took his parchment and seal and busied himself with another letter to King's Landing.

\- -- - -- -

"Rickon?" She knocked quietly on his door, jumped when it crashed off its hinges and onto the floor. "I didn't break it!"

"Did, too!" he automatically yelled back, glancing up from the papers covering his desk. "What do you want?"

"To talk to my baby brother."

"You don't call me little brother anymore."

"You got taller than me," she smiled, pulling up a chair. "I was talking to Jon, y'know."

"He's finally stopped writing letters?" he teased.

"Like you will be to Shireen?" But eugh, no, Jon wasn't writing love letters to the Queen. "He just mentioned something, and I wanted to ask you about since we're usually companionable silence than long-winded talks."

"Ask," he grinned, wolfish and boyish and just a smidgen of refined, it was strange he ever seemed more wildling than lordling.

But she had to hesitate, because she knew how she'd react if someone asked her. "Why," she started quietly, "don't you really like Winterfell?"

It was home. It was memories. But, he told her, his memories were the people he couldn't remember, not the cold stone halls that felt even less like home when he'd known the freedom of trees and starry skies for so long. It just wasn't for him, he had said quietly.

They sat in their mutual silence, comfortable since they didn't have to speak, and she couldn't question how he felt. She understood it more than she thought.

\- -- - -- -

She found Gendry sitting alone in the Godswood. His back was against the scarred tree he pointed out to her, the one she'd taken Needle to when she first came back to Winterfell, and with his legs free before him, his head lolled back, his eyes closed -- she thought he was asleep.

So she pinched him, and he yelped, and she laughed until he got serious and quiet, told her he thought he could feel the trees, but he wasn't too sure.

"I don't think anyone is," she told him lightly, dropping to her knees in front of him. "I think that's why it's called faith," but that sounded intense and silly and too spiritual for her, so he smiled as he looked at her like he used to. With his soft eyes, the slight crease to his brows like he isn't too sure what he's seeing in her, but he likes it anyway.

"I talked to Jon."

"And I talked to Rickon."

"Before you ask," he said reluctantly, "I can't tell you about what Jon's doing."

"Fine," she relented, but if he believed she was letting it drop, he was an idiot. "But you've refused the Throne and Storm's End now."

"Almost," but he's not sure why he's said that. He lets her nudge one of his legs away as she makes for his lap, and he doesn't think twice about curling his arms around her and cradling her to his chest. His nose is in her hair, and --

"This is nice," she sighs all soft like she's content.

He likes when neither of them think about it, he thinks, when she isn't pretending she's too fierce to be held when he can see her melt when he's close to her (he's not stupid), and when he's not thinking why he shouldn't be holding her. It's just wrong that he won't, so he does, all tender and good for her.

"We could consummate our marriage," she pipes up all of a sudden, and he nearly tosses her off his lap. "Don't!"

She's whining, protesting loudly with her fingers claws around his neck as she laughs meanly. Once again, he's lost to this tease of a girl, scowling still with her laughter shaking against him, her words a japing apology at his throat. "You'll get us into trouble."

"Trouble's always had no trouble finding you," she just has to point out, but he frowns at the top of her head even as he kisses it, doesn't tell her she knows that 'cause she was there egging the trouble on.

"What do we do now, Arya?"

"I guess we wait for Jon to do what he will," she murmurs, back to sweet and soft in his lap as he holds her to his chest.

"You don't mean that," he almost laughs, knowing in apprehension that she didn't wait for life to happen for her.

"Do you think you're going to King's Landing with him?"

"I haven't decided yet."

"Decide tomorrow," she whispers. "I need to craft my stowaway plan in case Jon says no." She's both jesting and serious, but he already knows what he wants.

"If I go, you'll go?"

"No one can stop me."

"And if I stay?"

"Then we'll both be here, and we'll pray Jon won't do anything stupid."

"You could go with him, y'know," he told her gently. "If you wanted to. He'll probably try to arrange things, you could help."

She muffled out some noncommittal noise, hit her cheek against his shoulder as she looked up to him. "What aren't you telling me about it?"

"Nothing," he lied. Her eyes were just daggers aimed at him, so he sighed, loosened his hold on her like he always did when he expected her to want to leave. "I'm thinking I'll go," he mumbled, not meeting her eyes.

"Then we're going," she nodded, all consternation, and he didn't know when his grip held fast around her again since he didn't want to let her go.

"Maybe without you," he said, quiet so maybe she wouldn't hear. But of course, she did, and she was fighting out of his arms as he hurried to tell her why, what Jon had said about it.

It just didn't make a difference, he swore to the sky, 'cause she was shoving at him and storming off, women's wrath and childish hurt piercing his heart all over again, and he was a fool.

At least, he was for the moments he was sitting there by himself with the seconds that stretched on as he hated himself for having to have brought it up.

But then he can hear her coming up the path again, her strides angry and quick, and he braces himself in preparation for her to hit him again. She doesn't, though.

She scrambles back into his lap, her arms needy around him, and she mumbles _no_ against his tunic, desperate and pathetic and he loves her. So much.

"No," he agrees, he has to, quiet into her hair, and she punches him again because he's shaking in laughter at her, but no. They'll work something out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I've learned in the past two days that two brilliant authors on here read this story, but I've never heard from them? I love your feedback, lovelies! I love knowing what you think and feel and what you're thinking will happen. Your reviews give me life; don't be shy!
> 
> And. As I'm planning these next few chapters (plan, pfft), I'm thinking any pretense of keeping this story M-rated just can't happen. Any objections to bumping it up to E? I don't know about you guys, but Gendry's losing his maidenhead soon. :P


	25. Broken All the Chance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Well -- at first he thought it was true. I thought if I told him something ridiculous, he wouldn't think anything of our marriage 'till it's all proper-like, 'cause that's more believable, isn't it?" He frowns at the offensive rain, a drop on his cheek, ice cold but not frozen enough to turn to snow, and it looks like it'll storm soon. "I figured that if he'd see we hadn't done the worst possible thing out there --"
> 
> "Like consummating our marriage."
> 
> "-- he wouldn't be too out of sorts, right?"
> 
> She didn't know why he was asking her. She hadn't been there. But Gendry was stupid and sweet, and she was right.

She's waiting outside Jon's study.

Yes, _she's_ the one left out of the room and left pacing down the corridor, trying the handle every so often because maybe it isn't _really_ locked, leaning back against the heavy door and straining to hear what Gendry and Jon were speaking about inside.

"Go ahead to the kitchens," he had told her early this morning. "I'll meet you in a bit for breakfast," but like hell.

It had been three hours since he was _just talkin' to Jon for a moment_ , and she'd break down this door like she wanted to when one of her handmaiden's brought breakfast to Jon. And Gendry. This was ridiculous. If one of them weren't dead when the door finally opened..

She didn't know what they even had to talk about.

Well, that isn't true; they could talk about the marriage and King's Landing and Gendry being a traitor to her cause. But that word's a bitter frown at her mouth, so she tries to forget it and what it meant to Winterfell, an eyelash on her cheek and a fist to her palms as she leans onto the door again, sighing heavily.

It's just her luck that the door opens near another hour later.

"Gendry, what is it?" she asks like it's one word, seeing the scowl darkening his face as he stalks out of the room with angry shoulders, a mad gait.

" _Him_ ," he all but snarls, fierce and peeved when he grabs her hand, helps her match her strides to his quick ones.

She's smirking before she can help it, remembering his quick temper when they were younger, when they were in Harrenhal, when half of their talks when they caught free moments were made up of him complaining about some self-serving prick of a lord or another. But then her smirk's a giddy grin, because he's so casually and honestly mad at whatever happened, he's going about mentioning Jon like he's slandering a man that's a friend. A brother. And she doesn't feel the least bit sorry, nope.

"What'd you do to him, then?"

"Me?" he half-shouts, his jaw locking at the end of it. And oh, she loves this. "I didn't do nothing to him. He's the one that --"

"Bastard?" she offers helpfully, and he's a delirious laugh to indulge her dry humor for a second, a scowl at her the next.

"Arya. He's your brother. He could be the bloody King of Westeros."

"Well," she starts for technicalities, the all-knowledgable tone she hears Shireen take sometimes, but he just cuts her off.

"'Sides, the bastard's us."

She can practically feel his pulse thrumming wildly at his wrist in his angry rush. "Foul word."

"Just not when you say it," he scorns with another laugh. He sounds more gentle, though, weaker, a paced breath as he tries to remember the way out since he took a wrong turn. "I told him you were with child, too."

He said it so loosely like it was irrelevant, yet she still choked on air. "You what? _Why_!" she shouts, her cheeks starting to burn red. Her vision starting to burn red. "Why?" she jabs at him, scowling when he shakes her off, reaches for her hand again. "We had everything sorted. We discussed what we were telling Jon!"

"No, we didn't! You just said to let him think we were wed!"

"Not tell him we're having a child! Godsdammit, Gendry. You didn't even want him to think we'd married. How do you tell him we have a child when you wanted to annul our marriage since it wasn't consummated?"

"We're not even --" But that wasn't entirely true. He tugged her down a hall so they were walking again, her angry sighs and his fingers gentle on her wrist. "At first, I _was_ trying to 'splain to him how we were married before the gods, just not in the light of anything legal he might want for you," he says patiently.

She rolls her eyes at him, jerks her hand away from his. "Then what was the problem?"

"He didn't believe that! He was just staring at me like he knew everything already, so I --"

"You lied?" she snorts, pushing past him to outside. "About a baby. You're stupider than I thought you were."

"He didn't believe you were with child. Well -- at first he thought it was true. I thought if I told him something ridiculous, he wouldn't think anything of our marriage 'till it's all proper-like, 'cause that's more believable, isn't it?" He frowns at the offensive rain, a drop on his cheek, ice cold but not frozen enough to turn to snow, and it looks like it'll storm soon. "I figured that if he'd see we hadn't done the _worst_ possible thing out there --"

"Like consummating our marriage."

"-- he wouldn't be too out of sorts, right?"

She didn't know why he was asking her. She hadn't been there. But Gendry was stupid and sweet, and she was right. Trouble found him when he thought he was being clever. _Winterfell, go to hell_. "Did it work?" Because he almost looked thoughtful like it had, like he'd protected her in some strange, twisted, deluded way that didn't really help at all.

"Sorta," he smiles, guiding her away from a puddle next to the cobble. "I think he figured it out for himself."

"Then what took so long?" she grumbles, back to being annoyed she had to wait out in the hall.

"Oh," but he's frowning again, holding open the door of the smithy for her but shaking the sprinkled rain water from his hair at her. "He sat there for the longest time staring at me. I worried for me life just a little."

"You could have shouted for help."

"From a woman carrying a baby inside her? Of course not," he laughs, watching her as she wipes the faint trickles of water from her forehead. She's a quick scowl at him, a quicker grin when she tells him she'd be fearsome while pregnant since she isn't truly thinking about what it means, but he can't help but ask her, too quiet to sound hopeful. "Do you think that's in our future?"

"..Babies?" If he doesn't sound hopeful, she doesn't sound terrified, watching him pretend to busy himself as he moves from forge to fire.

He just nods stiffly, feels like he's walking into a trap she's setting up as he stands there and sees her in his peripheral start to pull her shirt over her head. "Children, aye," he murmurs. Maybe three of them, a couple girls like her, a boy just like her, too.

And she knows he's had to have thought about it. Like family, like them, maybe sons exactly like him, but "Gendry," she starts with a sigh, draping her blouse over his shoulder since he isn't facing her. It's just her smallclothes covering the modesty she doesn't care for from the waist up, but he isn't looking at her. He just stands there, tense and rigid with her shirt still warm and too close to his face. "Why would anyone want to bring a child into the world like it is?"

"'Cause it's changing, and good people make it better," he says.

He might be listening a bit too consciously for the rustle of cloth as she skims it off in the back and the rummaging she does for whatever of his she wants, but she knows that. It's why she's almost hoped he'd have followed her. "You really believe the world's changed?" she asks him, too honest to sound earnest and muffled by linen as she pulls it over her head.

"Maybe," he mutters like he's cursing himself. "But what do I know?"

"A lot." She ties the laces to one of his tunics over her chest, happy she can breathe and unhappy he's still staring at the fire and not watching her. She clears her throat softly, waiting for him to turn. Or -- maybe not. She likes this view of him, serious and too focused on the fire that's lighting up his face, all orange and yellows against his stubbled jaw, eboning his blue eyes when he looks to her. Her head's a rush, her heart quick and seizing when his gaze drops from her eyes to her lips to just above her folded arms beneath her chest.

"You're going to be a distraction today, y'know," he tells her.

"Not my fault," but he snickers at how weak she sounds as she says it. "Tell me something?"

His eyes are back on hers, staring at her like he can see her soul, and it's suddenly hotter than the fire he smirks at. "You should be wearing something under that."

"Don't tell me what to do," she snaps, scowling at his grin. He glances back to her, and for an instant, she thinks of striking some ridiculous pose and making the back of his neck turn even more red, but she's struck at how stupid that is.

"What are you smiling at?"

"Nothing." She disappears into the back when he starts to laugh, emerges seconds later with that worn leather jerkin of his she loves dwarfing her shoulders. "I'm going for food."

"I have a few swords with poor balance to fix," he tells her. "Then one of the men was asking for more arrowheads, and I was asked to try makin' a table though I'm no carpenter, and you're coming back, right?"

Her rebuttal was easy off her lips, like that habit of a grin as she moved to the door when he moved towards the anvil. "Want me to?" she teased.

"Pfft," he scoffed, back to brash and annoyed that didn't quite reach him. "No. Yes," and he smiled back to her grin, her dimples and her molten ice eyes, the rain still softly falling beyond the open door.

\- -- - -- -

"Gods," he curses with a short laugh.

He hadn't jumped a foot out of his skin when she sneaked up behind him, no. Not at all. _Of course_ the moment he's taken his shirt off for bed is when she creeps in quiet as a cat and places both her hands on his hips.

"You stink," she murmurs, pressing her cheek to his back and breathing him in. Sweat and man and smoke and _Gendry_ , and his laugh's a rumble against her as he relaxes. He doesn't stink at all, at least not of anything that doesn't warm her like he does.

"I was going to wash up 'fore sleep," he offers lightly, a shallow breath when she squeezes her arms around him. "Figured you'd forgotten to come back."

She lets him go when he takes one of her hands to show he's jesting, but she rolls her eyes anyways. Like she'd ever forget.

He's at the water basin with soap and a cloth and wiping the soot and ash from his face, his arms, his chest and his shoulders and his back since he won't remove any other clothing with her there. She's watching him from the bed, and she can feel her face get hot, feel time slowly stretch and thin as water replaces sweat between his shoulder blades. His muscles are fluttering beneath his skin as he moves his arms, flexing in reach, but when he turns slightly and scrubs soap at his shoulders, leaving his abdomen to her captive gaze, it's all she can do to not stare at the dark, dark hair thick and thickening in a trail over his muscles and beneath the laces of his breeches.

Her throat's gone dry, but no, no, she has more composure than this.

So she tells him about seeing Rickon and Shireen and his lips pressed chastely to the left side of her face and then the other red side. She tells him that she penned a letter to Sansa, and how it's weird that she misses her. Her sister was the one she desperately wanted to talk to earlier, maybe now, because married sisters could give advice, right?

That's stupid.

"You know you can talk to me," he tells her sweetly, slightly muffled by the towel he's scruffing through his hair. "About anything. I'm no Sansa, but if you ever need an ear, I'll listen."

"I already talk to you," she smiles just to frown when he tugs a clean, roughspun tunic over his head and tugs off his boots. "I could ask Sansa things I couldn't ask you, though."

"Like?" He gestures for her to move over as he disappears to the front to make sure everything's locked up. She can smell the sudden burn of a blown out candle, then it's dark and he's back and he's making a noise because she hasn't scooched. "I know you don't like sleeping against the wall, so move."

"I'd ask her about what to do when a man keeps telling me what to do," she grumbles. But she complies, on her knees and sitting up while he moves behind her and fights with the blankets on the other side. "I'd tell her to tell me what it means that you keep leaving me for unimportant things, too."

"Moments ago?" he starts, slapping at his pillow until it's the right fluff of comfortable and supportive. "Arya, I was _locking the door_. Making sure no one comes in during the night."

"Locks won't stop them," she tsks, hearing the mattress creak as she stands up and over to kick off her boots. And maybe.. "I meant earlier, besides," she informs him, smirking when she hears him groan and roll over.

He groans again because men are weak, and she easily catches her pillow when he throws it at her. "Back to that, then? I could say anything to you, and you'd still talk about how I left you," he says. She could hear his frown and feel him shift away when she crawls back beneath the covers. Bloody _good_. "Maybe I brought you flowers, but oh, no, it doesn't matter 'cause I abandoned you when we were children."

"Older than children," she murmurs, but he was raving again, and the quilted blanket was sticking to the hem of her-his tunic at her knees.

"It was raining today, and I'm still so miffed you abandoned me," he mocks, audibly scowling. "We had plans for a picnic in the glass garden or wherever, but it'd be so much nicer if I'd known you hadn't left. I want to kiss you, but you abandoned me." He scoffs again, but he sounds teasing instead of bitter. She wasn't even talking about the Brotherhood.

"Well," she hums, turning on her side to face him. "I do want to kiss you," and she doesn't know how the mood changed from feeling so light to so charged like this where she thinks he's staring at her lips, "but you _did_ abandon me, after all. Also, I meant earlier as in today, with Jon."

"Doesn't matter," he smoothly recovers. "You abandoned me, too." He just says it more contentedly. His fingers are light against her cheek, rough as he traces her cheekbone with his callused, gentle, and hard fingers, and then even moreso when he brushes along her nose, her eyebrow, her chin. He traces her jaw with his fingers, finds her lips with his thumb, and her shiver's quick beneath all the blankets. "I forgave you," he whispers.

"I'd have forgiven you, but --"

He shakes his head at the dark, and she swears his commanding tone is all too pleasing as he says it with a breath of a laugh, "Shut up," sounding both loving and forgiving. The words tender on his lips, and she's staring at what she thinks she sees without any light. His lips.

"Gendry?" It's so quiet. She can hear her heart start to thud a little louder, starts to want him to be able to feel it all anticipation and abandon to wrench away.

"Yes?" His voice is low and soft, spreading over both of them, starting to rasp his breath against her face with a brush of his fingers to her cheek. It's lulling, and his touch is always so sweet. At least, until he drags his thumb along her bottom lip and she's slightly lightheaded all of a sudden.

"Can you take off your shirt?" she blurts quietly, too quickly and too brashly before she realizes how silly she sounds. "If you want to, I mean," but she sounds weak again even though she's trying to twist her words to make it his idea.

Maybe it's because she asked instead of demands; she thinks she sees a grin of his white teeth before it's gone. While it isn't difficult to imagine the look he probably has, like he's deciding to choose between what he wants and what's right, his brows are furrowed, his eyes probably glittering with laughter at her like he sometimes does before he tells her no, and she thinks he will. He usually does -- she might not even be disappointed now, his thumb slowly outlining her lips, their breaths the only quiet in the loudness of their silence.

She's about to tell him to nevermind it, maybe even jest about his virtue, _her_ virtue to detract from the slight sting of rejection she's too proud to feel, but then he's a deep breath, the protest of the creaking bed frame as he sits up, the slow draw of his tunic tugged over his head by his arms as he lifts it from the back, lets it muss his hair before he tosses it off the side of the bed.

"Alright," he whispers. Not that he's nervous, but his laugh nearly sounds it. Like he's blushing, and she smiles before she can stop it, damn-near giggles hysterically when he yawns and stretches in all dramatics. He's over-exaggerating, flexing for what she thinks is mostly her benefit though she can't see how his arms ripple or his veins jump or his musculature just be _beautiful_ , all she can see is the the outline of him, glimpses of his pale skin as he makes a fool of himself for her.

"Anything else?" he asks just a bit cheeky, cocksure and laughing into her hair. "I like it when you're nice," he murmurs in afterthought. He curves his arm under her, wraps his other tight around her back so he can hold her close to him.

She easily folds into him and fits against his chest, and she knows he loves the feel of her like she does him. It's easy being wrapped up in each other, as easy as it is talking or enjoying silence, and yes. Yes, there is something else to ask him. It just really isn't a question. She sets a palm to his chest, feels his heart quicken beneath her hand as she presses closer to him, presses him flat on his back. "Don't move," she whispers.

"Arya," he says quickly, and she feels the heat of his hand warming through the sleeve of her-his tunic, but she's dying in the heat of his bare skin against her thinly-clothed chest, her breasts pressed against him like this, and if she can feel it so close, then maybe she --

"Don't move," she repeats, a threat, but she hates how shy she sounds.

"You should be wearing something under that," he rushes out softly.

"Yes," because he said that earlier, but when has she ever listened? Never, so he shouldn't be surprised, but she loves the lines of his throat as he swallows dryly and gasps breathily, and they're really where they've always been.

She's waiting for him like she always is, but then he's another deep breath 'till he's relaxed, a flash of his smile as he moves his hand from her arm to her waist. He squeezes reassuringly, his fingers gentle over the linen, over her trim, fleshy hip, and she says it again, murmurs for him not to move as he does so slowly she thinks he isn't breathing, but she isn't either. "Don't move," again so shy for an order, so nervous when his left hand finds her hips, too.

He lifts her effortlessly, guides her by her waist to settle over him slowly. He's careful to shift her forward when her leg slots over him, her knees curling around his waist instead of his thighs, over his abdomen instead of over his groin, and he probably thinks it's best for both of them until he's realized it's her skin touching his. "Arya --"

" _Don't_ ," she insists. His calluses are like fire up the bare flesh of her calf, the curve behind her knee, the skin of her soft thighs to see just how much she is or isn't wearing, but there's nothing but the shirt she stole from him covering her, and his hands flinch away when he finds the frayed hem too high up on her thighs. "Don't move."

If she can feel his breaths more raspy with her hands at his sternum, gentle and pressing over the dark hair curling his chest, feel his breaths more sharply with her legs around him, then he's probably feeling more, she thinks, all skin hot on his, and he's frozen. She's enraptured, and gods, it's all she can do to keep still and steady her breaths. The dim nightly darkness their eyes have adjusted too isn't light enough to make the red in her face visible, but she swallows audibly. Her mouth's so dry.

His hands are on her legs again.

"I won't," he swears, solemn and so deep she can feel it vibrating through his chest, over his erratic heart. His eyes look black in the dark, in what she knows is lust, and she can't steel the shiver that rips through her. He inhales sharply through his nose, his palms rough and spanning up from her knees, but his fingers circle presses further up her thighs.

"That's moving."

"Your skin's so warm," he hushes out like he's reverent.

She hears him gasp hazily as she slides her hands down his torso and skims her curious fingertips over his stomach. She curls them around his ribs and feels each dip of bone and muscle inflect his skin, traces the lines that shift and flutter the muscles in his abdomen just above where she's sitting. It's scorching her, his skin, his hands palming up the quivers in her thighs and even more up, past where she wants him to touch, but he drags the hem of her tunic up just a bit, lifts it up from where it's covering her.

"That's a lot of my skin, Gendry. _Gendry_ ," like a whine as he barely skims his callused fingertips over the curve of her bare arse before moving his hands up to the small of her back, around the prongs of her sharp hipbones naked beneath the threadbare tunic starting to cling to her in sweat.

"Is it?" She doesn't know how he manages to sound sarcastic, but he does, something snide and soft in her name as he breathes it out. "Are you alright?"

It's not like they're really doing anything. She just can't breathe with his hands slipping further up to her ribs, inwards so his fingers splay over her stomach with his exploring, feeling touches. He's cautious as much as carefully curious, and it's heat spreading through her and melting since it almost isn't enough, really is just perfect because it's warm and sweet and something just a little more.

"Are you?" she murmurs instead, raking her nails against his chest.

"Fuck," he curses brokenly. He practically presses up against her arse when she squirms, and his rough fingers are so close to touching the swell of her breasts, she's leaning into him and making a sound that rivets a shiver down his spine. "You're killing me."

But she's lost in it, too, the transition of not touching most days to rutting against each other one afternoon to nothing the next. And this now, with his palms covering more of her skin than he's seen, with her thighs feeling every move he makes, and it's like she's dying, too.

"I can't do more than kiss you tonight," he whispers like he regrets it. He lets his hands roam over her back, and she's another taut shiver when the sensation of his coarse hands ghost along her smooth skin, linger lovingly on the jagged scar he can feel beneath her left shoulder blade. He pulls her gently down towards him, holds her heart to his, lets her squirm sinfully so she's laying between his legs and all warm heat where he's pressing up against her leg.

"Will you ever not want to stop us?" she asks like she's pouting, shy, her chin held by one of his hands.

"I don't want to," he admits like it's some great secret, but she thinks he's fallen for her thighs just a bit. His fingers are rubbing circles against the outside of hers, just beneath the hem of that damn tunic pushed up far past her knees where it falls naturally, and she thinks he'll curve her leg over his hip again before he steels himself. "But I will."

And she thinks he really oughtn't, but the fight leaves her lips when he drags his mouth to hers, and she's not disappointed, she realizes. She isn't relieved either, she's just kissing him, asking him _why_.

"You'd be glad for it later," though she doesn't when later is or how it reflects on now.

He angles her chin to better kiss her, slips his thumbs up along her skin to meet the rise of her hipbones, and a muffled moan leaves her throat. She knots her fingers into his coal dark hair to pull at, to hold him steady since the bed feels like it's moving when it isn't, it's just her head spinning, and "I'm happy now," she breathes into the kiss, not deepening it but inhaling more deeply, taking in as much of him as she can. His skin's firm and hot beneath her, against her, and every bit of her feels him shake when she strokes her deft hand from his collarbone to his hip.

"You won't be," he might have said. Neither of them can get a word in since she's kissing him when he stops kissing her and he's kissing her when she stops kissing him, and it's more sweat, more heat, he's said she won't be happy in a moment for real.

It's like she sinks into him with this kiss that curls her toes and has his hips flexing up to hers as their lips bruise and their teeth clash and his tongue smooths over hers, and it's a kiss she'd have told Sansa about, maybe. A kiss she would've shared with Gendry on their wedding day, like they did but didn't, his fingers curling into her hair delicately, his open mouthed kisses trailing from her lips to her cheek.

"'S enough," he rumbles out lowly, breaths ragged against her forehead. It's torment that isn't friction paramount, so when he wraps his arms around her carefully and rolls her onto her side, she curses, tries to keep him in her hold.

"I'm not letting go."

"You won't get any sleep."

"I'm not tired," she mumbles bitterly into his neck, her nails fierce on his shoulders. She probably won't ever sleep again with how frustrated she feels. _Stupid_. "You don't have to limit yourself when you touch me," she adds. But her lips feel swollen and she sounds like she's whining uncharacteristically like he was.

"It isn't about that. _Darling_ ," he calls her, laughing quietly, brushing her dark hair from her eyes. "We'd have ten babies by now, otherwise."

He sounds strange, and she isn't going to ask. She lets him obnoxiously stretch again and press more towards her, gently folding her into his arms, and he's so sweet like they hadn't been all skin, it's ridiculous. "I can still feel you," she tells him, just because she can.

"Arya," he sighs. "What do you want me to do? Unlace my breeches and rut into my hand?" He's blushing, she can feel it before he turns away from her, collapses onto his back all frustrated and annoyed. "I'm trying to be _good_ about this. Stop making it hard." But then horror must dawn on him when she starts to laugh, and he's a quick, cursed stutter. "I didn't mean -- fuck, not.. that, I meant the, uh."

He curses again when she nestles into his side. She kisses his shoulder chastely before she breaks into another fit of giggles, and he shoves her away weakly before wrapping an arm around her. "I know what you meant."

"Yeah, well," he mutters, sighs with a lazy kiss to the top of her head. "Doesn't matter anymore."

He shoves her again when she starts to laugh. "Sorry," she grins, nuzzling him. "Sorry."


	26. I Wish That I Could Say the Same

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't until Shireen absently started humming quietly that he brought himself back to here. She was humming that ballad about summer and a maid and her hair that he sometimes hums to himself when he's doing quiet work, and his palm slaps the table more harshly and loudly than he intended.
> 
> "Can you tell me about the Lord of Storm's End now?" he asks her.

He wakes up to her all sprawled ontop of him, all elbows and legs and her hair in his mouth and what he thinks is her drooling on his chest. He just isn't sure with his left arm gone numb, her sharp knee probably puncturing through his hip by now, and now that he's awake and trying to breathe, it's that much more uncomfortable.

And like years ago just after the King's Road, but with more skin this time, as appealing as it was with her hair a rat's nest and her knee shifting up to his gut.

"Arya," he grunts, no time to be sweet when she's actually suffocating him. "I'm dying," he wheezes, trying to gently force her off him. She weighs less than a light sack of potatoes, but her hold on him tightens with her knees not as mindful as they should be, and she bloody hurts. " _Arya_."

" _No_." She starts squirming like she's trying to crawl inside him and how warm he is, whining pitifully and sleepily in words he can't understand, so he lets her writhe until she's comfortable at his expense.

He's just so over it when she's snoring adorably into his chin the next instant with her arm over his eyes and her legs over him. "Arya," but he's thinking maybe longer spent in this bed isn't dreadful.

"Gendry," she whispers, drowsy and mumbling, a deep breath in her dreams as she nuzzles into him that way she does when she's sleepy and her inhibitions are lost to how personable of a heater he is.

"Yeah?"

She's a heavy yawn, a stretch that she tiredly grunts with. "I could kill you," she warns drearily with another yawn, but then she's snoring again.

And he doesn't know what to do with himself, really. With her either. He just drapes the covers more around her still all sprawled across him, kisses the crown of her head. "I know you could," he murmurs.

\- -- - -- -

"I'm so happy you're asking me." Shireen beams her early morning smile, taps the various sheets of Willas's letter on the table so they're all straight and tidy and perfect. "I love helping with these sorts of things."

It's that pinch of awkwardness he feels around highborn ladies that aren't Arya (because she might be a lady proper and what else you will, but it's easy to forget that when his senses do and see her wandering about in mud and goodness knew what else) nor as free as she is, like how Sansa always seemed to care for some regard or another and look at him _too_ accutely when asking questions she didn't know he didn't know, but Shireen. His cousin.

She isn't looking at him like she expects something, she's looking at him like she's so happy to be sitting here with him, and he just doesn't have the heart to tell this girl he'd gone to Rickon for help reading the letter first, just to be told by him that it'd make Shireen happy if he went to her instead.

So he did.

And she doesn't babble, not really, but he's guessing she's trying to fill in the silence where he doesn't quite know what to say to her, and it doesn't help none that Shaggy's resting his head in her lap and letting her pet him like he's one of those stuffed, plush animals for children instead of a lethal beast.

"Rickon told me he's been teaching you how to read, I remember."

"And he's been remembering, too, aye. Yes," he quickly remedies, frowning. "He said you taught him, too."

"Aye," she emphasizes in that pristinely clear, endearing way she does, her eyes softening like she's remembering that with everything else. Until they harden just a smidgen, and her mouth's set to a straight line. "I've taught lots of grown men to read, actually. We ought to do something about education opportunities everywhere."

" _Ought_ we?" he snarks, a dimple diveting his cheek as he watches her in amusement. She's pushing books and parchments aside, clearing space for her elbows on the table to hold her chin improperly in that way he sees Rickon do when Sansa used to let him get away with it, but she included _him_ in that _we_. Himself. Gendry. Like he'd have any say in what the highfolk do or don't in regards to other side of the streets, and that's more amusing than anything. "He wasn't jesting when he said you were industrious," he mutters, frowning to understand whatever she's drawing up. Some lines. A circle.

"And she wasn't jesting when she said you were intelligent," she grins, the right side of her cheek lifting as she glances up.

"Arya?"

"Don't sound so shocked," she huffs. "It's obvious she adores you. At least.."

When she trails off with a crease in her brow, a look away like she's deciding what to or not say, his curiosity's peaked like he isn't a man that doesn't care for gossip or irrelevant opinions. "At least what?" he asks, sounding obviously too eager like a preening, gossipy old hen.

"Well, I don't want to insult you," she muses, almost teasing now. "We've only just become family, after all. It's just that sometimes, I'll hear things, and it's usually those in Winterfell so pleased to see how taken Lady Arya seems to be with the blacksmith, but not as often as how unsure they are if she doesn't just want to off you instead. They're all too afraid to ask, though," she remedies with a quick smile, a bright touch to their identical blue eyes.

"I bet that makes her happy," he says slowly, not knowing what else to tell her. People thought Arya loved him or wanted to kill him?

..Bloody _good_.

"She doesn't mind what anyone says, does she?"

"Depends on who," he nods to her. The tension's eased somewhat, and he suspects that's why she got to talking about Arya. Mayhaps Shireen was more subtle a diplomat than anyone gave her credit for. "You were talkin' about education?"

"Oh!" She perks up with such a bubbly cheer, it's likely what Rickon sees all the time, this young girl treating his direwolf like a baby, chatting incessantly about what she's thinking or what should be done. It makes her look lively somehow, he thinks, and it even touches her pockmarked left cheek to make all of her bright and pleasant somehow, like everything's been taken in her stride to not just improve it 'cause it's bad, but to work with it. See what helps and what doesn't.

He doesn't know if she sees people like that, though, people, especially himself, so he's laughing before he can quiet the booming laughter echoing around the small room, errupting from his chest where the rest of the incredulity lies. He can't see himself being related to this girl, and he shakes his head to pardon himself even as he's chuckling, gesturing that it's nothing.

There are some things Shireen has forgotten, but she's never quite been able to suppress the memory of her Uncle Robert tripping over a cake at someone's gala of a feast, her father's quiet, unsurprised sigh, the laughter of everyone else in the hall -- but none so loud as Uncle Robert. At his own ridiculousness, mostly, because he'd fallen while he was perfectly sober, and his loud laughs caught in the banners and tapestries lining the walls, and it's what she hears now, so she'll finally tell him quietly, a polite smile to his bright blue eyes, his gasping breaths. "You laugh like Uncle Robert," but how fast he sobers from hysterics is more ridiculous than anything.

"Look like him, too, don't I?" he mutters quietly. Not bitterly, but there was a harshness to his voice, an uncomfortable tense posture to his shoulders.

"Not the uncle I remember, no."

"I saw him once, from very far away." He was going to leave it there, to not give himself another chance to hate the man that may as well have killed his mum, but Shireen's looking at him like she's waiting for something now, and he can't tell her how a small part of that seven year old boy he was wished to be the King for an instant, to be draped in warm furs, gold, silks. Heavy and happy and warm and not hurting like most of Flea Bottom. He can't tell her that since he regrets it so much, so he's a heavy, rough hand through his shaggy hair, vaguely thinks it's time to get it cut.

"..And?"

"He was fat?" He's careful not to sound too gruff, too bitter, an awkward, close-lipped smile as she exhales a laugh through her nose.

"My father hated that," she says, pausing a moment to sketch something else on her sketch of progress for amounting educational opportunities throughout Westeros. "You can ask me any questions, if you'd like. About Robert or Renly or my father. Yours, our grandparents, anyone of the Baratheons."

Her voice took a quiet turn, and he almost thought to apologize for how brash he might have seemed. But he didn't know what to say again, so he didn't. Just thought in the silence that settled over him.

It wasn't until Shireen absently started humming quietly that he brought himself back to here. She was humming that ballad about summer and a maid and her hair that he sometimes hums to himself when he's doing quiet work, and his palm slaps the table more harshly and loudly than he intended.

"Can you tell me about the Lord of Storm's End now?" he asks her.

"Edric?"

"Aye," he nods, and her smile is devious and oblivious.

\- -- - -- -

"I thought married women didn't have time to pen letters." Jon was a stoic frown, an unsure hand to his thickening beard. He'd stopped shaving, she noticed, watching him over the top of one of Sansa's letters.

"We don't," she grins wryly, but he's an affectionate eyeroll like when they were younger.

"Not Sansa, or you. I meant Willas."

"Oh," she frowns. Her nose crinkles as she tosses the parchment off to the side, because maybe she gave Sansa to Willas, but she never really took into account what leaving meant when Highgarden was so far to be taken away to. "Don't care about him."

Jon furrows a brow at her, quizzical and accusing. "You told me you were impressed by him."

"I told you he wasn't awful when he threw food at his awful sister."

"Don't say she's awful," he chastises. "She's suffered like everyone."

She almost laughs before she can help it, thinking of that simpering, silly maiden pained by anything, but then she remembers the sunny Braavos streets and the whispers of the Knight of the Flowers. She knows what it's like to lose part of a brother. Worse than Rickon, though she won't say it when Loras is far more worse than any gossip that used to spread about him. "He wrote to Gendry, Willas did," she says instead.

The way Jon perked up was suspicious. "About what?"

"He wouldn't let me read it."

"And you didn't anyways?" he laughs, a flash of the carefree boy -- man -- still there when he gets to play at being Jon Snow instead of Lord Stark.

"Pfft, don't you worry. I'm waiting for the right time. Patience," she nods, like Gendry was always telling her. But then that reminds her -- "Jon?"

"Yes?"

"Do you miss Sansa?"

"Do.. do you?" He laughs again, really just because their parents should have seen the day. "I do miss hearing her sing softly," he admits sheepishly, busying himself again with the letter.

But she did, too. "Especially since she wouldn't for so long."

"Yes."

"Yes," she tries, a sudden glance out the window where she can the smoke billowing up above the forge.

And the entry to the forge.

"Jon," she starts, since surely not. He's looking more intently at Willas's written words, and she's seeing right through him, an arch to her back as she sits straighter, her hands folded primly in her lap. "Is that why you moved your solar?"

"It was more convenient," he mumbles, a shy blush flushing his face even as he looks up indignantly and regally. "For _all_ of us."

Maybe it was, she has to agree. But only now just because she thinks she understands it more, what going away might mean when it's other people: Sansa living half a continent away, her own disappearing to the Godswood with Gendry for days. How did Jon feel? Even if he'd gone away first before, but there isn't a sense in going away again. There isn't.

So now that she's almost understood it all, there isn't a sense in going away, and she likes that even less.

It's settling in her stomach, the trype of hypocrisy, and it's bitter and cringing and this growing up business isn't worth it, really. "I have to be somewhere," she answers to Jon when his eyes question where she's off to, up and out of his study and away to set things the right bit of wrong.

"Tell Gendry I say hello," he calls to her, but she thinks all he needs to do is shout from the window, bloody gods.

\- -- - -- -

"Gendry?" she calls, a push of the door open and expectant to see him smithing away at some sword or legguards or something right there. But it's only the fire in the pit, the only sign of life living and crackling with it's tongues of flame smoking up the chimney.

And this is incovenient, really, she's ready to tell him everything that's upsetting her and eating away at her thoughts in worries he could smother away with a laugh, but she -- she freezes, because he _is_ in here.

In the back most likely, it's where his voice is faintly carrying from, behind that thick curtain (that seems to block out a lot of sound: note for future need, she thinks) she can make out his words through. She's a hand reaching out to pull it aside until something changes, his voice like he's shouting loud and angry, and she almost grins to think of who could be suffering this side of his anger until she freezes again. There isn't anyone in there with him; she doesn't hear any other voices.

It's just his, him, and when she just barely tugs the curtain a smidgen aside to see him, she sees his back, sees one of those painted pictures Shireen brought with her to show Rickon, one with a fat, black-haired, blue-eyed king on it. It's Robert Baratheon, and he's shouting at the picture with words that crumble with his shoulders, words like _needed_ and father and mother, and she can't listen to this, she can't.

She doesn't know why it's suddenly like an invasion of his privacy, but she hears his shouting soften to something more broken as she slips out the smithy.

\- -- - -- -

It's not even yet noon when Arya wanders in search of Rickon, because if she couldn't talk to Gendry, there's always Rickon.

But of course he's high up on a bannister, lounging up there all elbows and knees and eyes bright in the shadows.

"Why do you do that?" she asks aloud, shifting her weight to her left side.

"Why don't you?" But it's a weak comeback and he knows it, so he hops down, dusts off his breeches and looks down at her. "What has you worried?"

"I'm not worried," she protests instantly, quiets just as suddenly when she sees how identical his look resembles what used to be their mother's. Was that just irony or the gods' cruel attempt at humor or just Rickon taking after Mother's looks?

Honestly now, the world just doesn't need to do what it does sometimes, she decides.

"Nevermind," she huffs instead, shrugging it off like everything that was bothering her was his fault. "I don't want to talk to you anymore."

"Fine," he mutters darkly, grinning the next instant with a loving -- _Ouch, you pagan!_ \-- flick to her nose.

\- -- - -- -

"..Gendry?"

It's just after noon, this time, and when he startles, knocks the bolt out of the doorframe he's fixing, she thinks she's trained him well yet wonders if he's still angry, if he knows she was in there.

"Arya," he smiles, and he looks so _happy_ to see her, it breaks her heart again like he did this morning. "I'm fixing your door."

"My chambers' door," she appraises, clearing her throat obviously. He looks at her funny, but he turns, and she watches him turn back to hammer another bolt in place. "It wasn't broken this morning."

"It wasn't?" He looks back to her, general confusion until something clicks in his mind where accusation darkens his eyes with a sigh as he leans onto the wall. "It got anything to do with Rickon telling me it needed to be fixed?"

"How long ago?"

"Recent," he answers easily. And she thinks he's fine as far as he can tell, or maybe he's just better now, and that, _that_ has her happy. "Came in make some repairs since I couldn't work in the forge. Fire got angry, had to air some of the smoke out."

Or maybe not, though he's a quick smile pressing onto his mouth like the thought brings him joy, and she's a fool for how infectious he is. "That pagan," she curses chastely, Rickon, glowering at his light laugh though it's beautiful to hear. "He did it, I know it."

"Mmm," he agrees, setting his hammer on the collapsible work table he'd brought for the rest of his things. He leans back against the wall, roughs his hand along his jaw, looks for the first time like he's stressed or coming off how mad he was. "It'll be finished soon, still. Then there are a few more repairs to make around the keep."

"Will you be done with all of it soon?" Her voice does seem a bit too hopeful, but her reason says she still ought to talk to him, tell him everything about everything and make sure he's okay with everything else, pictures and fires and lineage.

People really do care more for lineage than love, don't they? It's strange, but not that strange, and certainly not him right now as his lips curve to a softer smile as he reaches out. "Come here," he says like he does, but he says it like he needs it this time, needs _her_ this time, and it's all of one step into his arms 'till hers are locked tight around him. "I miss you," he mumbles softly.

"I'm here," she says quietly, stretching up to her toes as he leans down, rests his forehead against her shoulder. He tugs her so close to him that she sighs, a soft, content sound, and it's only when she lifts one hand to curl through his hair that she realizes he's shaking. "Gendry," she whispers.

He doesn't answer, just fists his hands tight into her tunic to tug it just a breath up. His palms are warm on her back, rough, and he just hugs her closer to him, lets her hold him.

"I heard you in the forge," she admits quietly. She soothingly tries to brush her fingers through his hair, but he's shaking again, just with silent, dry laughter.

"I knew as soon as I saw you moments ago."

Her face didn't used to give so many of her emotions away, but maybe this is a good change. "Well," she mumbles. Her nose sniffles just to spite her, and then it's his hands warmly prying at her back to rub the sad away. "I thought you'd like me to tell you, anyways."

He pinches her lightly for the sassy tone she took, leaning back onto the wall with his hands at her sides, his eyes boring into her like they did when they could have kissed for the first time here. "I did," and she sees how his eyes are red, now.

"I hate him, too," she says suddenly, just for him so he'd snort that indignant way he does.

"Don't," he adds, softer than a whisper. She can't say why, but neither can he, she supposes. He finally lets her go, tilts his head to gesture her to get going. "I'll finish soon, then I'll see you. We'll read that letter, alright?"

Read or burn more pictures or kiss or something, sure.

\- -- - -- -

"Ready to talk?" Rickon asks snidely.

"Not anymore," she mutters, because her baby brother got so mean when neither her nor Jon were watching. "I just wanted to ask you something, if you have the time."

"Ask," he assures her, offering his arm like he's some noble, polite lord instead of the smarmy grin he's gracing her with. "I'll do my best to help."

Which might not be much because he's Rickon, but he is Rickon, and the words he says usually mean something. So she takes his arm even though it feels silly, and they're walking. "It's about Winterfell."

"I thought it would be."

"Do you remember when you ran off that first time?"

"Barely," he smiled, so wide that his Tully blue eyes crinkled. "You don't, though. You were still across the sea."

"Where'd you go, Rick?"

It's quiet, so quiet that she can barely hear the gravelled earth crunch beneath their feet, his long strides slowing until they stopped when he points distractedly at the skyline. "I thought I'd go off and find Bran," whippet-quick he says it, another boyish grin waving off how much it doesn't matter.

"Did you?"

He stares at her like she's stupid, a look he never quite got to perfect when he was three. "Don't know," he tells her dryly. "Have you asked him lately?"

"I don't mean in person!" She swats at his arm, and pfft, she can walk herself down the cobbles.

"I wasn't _actually_ looking for Bran," he calls after her, like it's obvious though he hasn't said so much to anyone. "I mean, I was, it's why I left, but it wasn't until after I'd gone that I knew it wasn't him I was trying to find."

"But you wanted to leave?"

He gave her another strange look, shrugging again. "I guess. I didn't want to stay, didn't know what Winterfell really was."

"And now?" She keeps from biting her lip somehow, the fall-to of all her anxious habits, but she still sounds so curious, so desperate for an answer to understand.

"I told you Winterfell was people that I remember, Robb, Father, Karstark and Nan and Hodor and Reed and you and Sansa and Mother. Not the stone, dirt, ash land," he mutters. Like he was cursing it, except wildling king or not, he was still a Stark. "It doesn't snow enough here."

She smiles back when he does, his slightly crooked teeth a flash of her own when she grins to the ground, hugs her arms warm around herself because there's a chill even when there isn't any snow. "I don't think we're that different," she muses, laughing quietly to the wind.

"Yeah, well." He'd hug her, but she'd probably hit him. "Are you --"

"Would you really ever leave again?"

"I would," he nods, with certainty that doesn't take the time to pause. He's a boyish grin again, his curly hair all askew in the breeze's clutch. "For Shireen."

"For you?" But words are funny things, more real when you say them aloud. She doesn't like it just now.

"It'd be selfish," and he shrugs again like that doesn't matter, too. "I've already done it a few times, though."

"Making sure you're back in bed before Sansa would notice doesn't count as leaving," she chastises. Or self-defends. She'd been there, too.

"Having to come back made it leaving, didn't it? Consequences for normal people, just probably not you."

"Because I'm abnormal?" she snorts.

"Because I think we all know you're gonna go off again," he corrects, taking her arm once more. He just curled his hand at her elbow, though, so he was walking like the feminine one would and letting her work through her slow, concentrated steps at her own pace. "You're going to come back, though, right?"

"Probably," she murmurs, before Rickon stops them because that answer isn't the one he wants to hear. " _Yes_ , I will, but I can't say when or where or.. anything. I didn't know I was leaving, you'll have to pardon me."

He rolls his eyes when she does, points again at the skyline. "You did."

"What were you looking for?" she needs to know quickly. "If not Bran."

"Still don't know, but I think Bran helped in that way he does," of branches and trees and Rickon's genetic taking to the intelligence that must have skipped her and Sansa and Jon.

\- -- - -- -

"I don't want to know what it says," she informs him before he's even got the chance to greet her. Or _see_ her all sneaked up on him in the kitchens. "Don't read me the letter."

Well, she'd likely have to read it to him if he couldn't recite it from memory, but details, details, he watches her plop onto the floor in front of the fire. "We don't have to," he assures her, wondering why she doesn't just use a chair. "There's --"

" _Shhh_."

And he does, for all of four seconds. "Arya, honey."

"Gods, you sound so southron."

"You're frightening away the people that just want to see you fed."

"I'm thinking," she stresses, serious and solemn and staring into the fire like she's old Lord Beric. He almost tells her so, but he doesn't want to think of his body after it all.

"Can I help?" he offers instead, considering for a half a second to join her on the floor. But nope, he was just fine and comfy here.

"I thought I saw you hit someone from across the yard."

"Oh," he mumbles, scowling down at his soup. It wasn't his anger that had done it, truthfully. At least, not just that. "Punched someone, aye."

"Because he said something to you?" she demands, a frown creasing at her brows, darkening her eyes as she turns to watch him sulk on the bench.

"No."

"Gendry."

"No," he repeats, frowing over at her. "It wasn't me. He said something about Shireen that wasn't nice, so I knocked out one of his teeth so he wouldn't be too pretty to look at neither."

"Oh," she starts, pleasure and surprise and pride taking turns coloring her face. "That's good." Very good, she thinks. She trained Gendry well, but he just keeps frowning at her.

"You can tell that to Jon 'cause the lug said he'd have me out of a job."

"That won't happen," she pfft's, finally standing up to inch her way over to him, her lips pursing like she'll say something but won't. She stops at his side and instantly reaches out for his arm, her fingers needy and grappling at the wool cloth. "..What are you doing?"

"Eating," he answers as patiently as he can, like he doesn't think she's daft when he's so smitten with her. "As you can probably can see," he adds, letting her just take hold of his right hand so he can try to eat with his left.

"We need to go somewhere and talk about some things," she notes, looking too pointedly at his hand.

She traces the lifeline curving out from the center of his palm, and he isn't half so nervous as he was a moment ago. He just locks his fingers with hers, squeezes her small fingers tightly. "You walk, I'll follow," 'cause why not admit that single truth he's proven true again and again, especially when it lightens up her face like that and makes her look radiant.

It's worth it when she laughs at him, quiet and pealing and devilish at the last instant. A smirk pries at her lips, sparkling her eyes something mischievous, and the glinting grey has him realizing yet again that he's so lost on her. "The Godswood, alright?" she calls back to him, disappearing in barrels and kitchen workers and sacks of vegetables courtesy of one of the first bountiful harvests to grace Highgarden. "Don't take too long!" she shouts at him, but he's already following after her.

"Did you want me to tell you what the letter said, now?"

"Do _you_ want to tell me?" she muses.

He does, because it's like he'd want her tactic permission, but Jon had assured him that it would all right itself out. Hopefully. So "No," he tells her shortly, watching his steps trail behind her, her muddy boots, her kicked up skirt. "You're wearing a dress," he realizes.

When she glances back at him, his eyes are intently focused on her rear, and her snicker draws his gaze back up to hers. "Aren't you supposed to be too mad to be looking?"

"What?" he laughs. "Says who?"

"Are you still upset?" she wants to know, slowing her gait so she's walking beside him, a tilt of her head to the right to nudge his shoulder.

"From earlier?" But he knows what she means, feels the touch of resurfacing anger bite at him before she absently softens it unknowingly, her hand squeezing his arm, the weight gone from his shoulders when the wind blew lightly through the overpass leaves. "No, it's all better now."

"Because of me?" she grins, rightfully self-important and snarky like she already knew the answer.

He chuckles with a quiet _aye_ , walks with her 'till they've passed the scarred heart tree and the still pond to the small clearing they ran off to that first time. "No kissin' while we're here," he tells her in a mumble, watching her eyeroll take over all her body as she stretches out on the soil.

"You still want to kiss me when you're mad," she says like she's so pleased, a crinkle to her nose when she smiles. She pats the space on the ground next to her and rolls over, her arm beneath her head, her dress clinging to her so the curve of her hip's emphasized, and --

"I'm fine here." He nods, stretching out his legs when he sits a short ways away from her, awkward and feeling his face start to burn. "You know I want to kiss you all the time, 'sides," he mutters, his brows furrowing as he looks up to the sky.

"We should talk about that," she informs him, suddenly no-nonsense and irritated, gone from sweet to fiery in the blink of an eye.

"..Kissing?" He's laughing again, and oh, maybe he's picking this up as a nervous habit.

"Gendry," she sighs, curling inwards so she's reclusing into herself. She could probably reach out and touch his leg if she wanted to. "Do you ever really think about leaving?"

"With you?"

"Anything." She bites at her lower lip, her wolfed teeth capturing the pink flesh in a way she really shouldn't. "We talked about seeing the world, didn't we?"

"We did," he says. He can feel his smile slowly stretch across his face, a glimpse of a life of moving from place to place and settling nowhere. "That's what you want to do?"

"Can you imagine yourself as lord of a castle?" she questions in all sincerity, until she snorts and shakes her head. " _King_."

" _Queen_ ," he throws back, grinning when she stretches her arm and swats at his leg. "I can't really. I can't see myself back in King's Landing. With you, though, that'd be different."

"How?"

"Because," he murmurs unintelligibly.

"What was that?"

"You heard me," he gripes. "We'll go see the world, then."

"And we'll return to Winterfell?" She seems so hopeful, thoughtful. Unsure.

"I'll go where you go, remember? Anything you'd want," because that's what he wants, just a life with her, growing old and happy. "I am going to marry you, you know," he adds, another slow smile touching his eyes.

"Oh," she remembers. She sits up and stretches, flops over so she's laying next to him not-so-diplomatically, her skirts clinging to her legs, her curls flyawaying into her eyes as she stares up to the branches. "We have to talk about that, too."

Confused, he watches her warily. "Wedding?" But she's suddenly acting like she's shy.

She points up to the sky distractingly, just blurts it out. "Our coupling."

"Arya," he starts slowly.

"Listen," she frowns, godsdamned pouting at him. "We should plan it, shouldn't we? When, where, how."

"How?" he repeats, biting back a laugh that's shaking his shoulders. " _Arya_."

"Well, I'm trusting that you know all of how it does happen," she tells him like he should know. Everything. "We should have a strategy."

"A strategy?"

"I don't want to be a maid anymore, Gendry," she huffs, stealing a glance at his face. "It's like you want me to die one."

"No." His voice sounds so tight. Her maidenhead wasn't some adversary to overcome with plans and strategies and whatnot. Seven hells. "Are you really that.. prepared?"

"Yes," but she faltered a breath, false bravado making her certainty sound like a question. "It's going to hurt," she says, all knowledgable like always. "That's what I've heard."

"I'll try to make it not to," he whispers quietly, flexing his hand so his knuckles brush against hers.

"It always looked painful," she tells him next. He can hear her frown, can see that shadow of a little girl shaking in stifled fear in case any of those worthless men suspect she isn't a boy.

"That was rape, not love making."

"It always looked grotesque in taverns," she adds like she hasn't heard him. She supports her head with her hand, her elbow dirt-stained when she rolls to her side on the forest floor, and the way she says it, the taunting, calculating gaze in her eyes -- it's like she's warning him, already expecting so much of him.

"It did," he agrees. Heard and saw so much with the Brotherhood, heard and saw what he wasn't supposed to when he was a boy in Flea Bottom. "But it'll be different with us."

"Will it?"

Now her grin's teasing him like her eyes are, and he shifts so he's on his side and facing her, too. "It will," he swears, a silly thing to promise. "When it's time, though."

"When it's time?"

"Not before," he states gruffly.

"And when's that?" she huffs, all patient and snarky and teasing, so ready just to rut with as little as she knows.

Or as a lot as she knows.

He mutters, "Stop looking at me like that," licks his lower lip, tears his eyes away from her own.

"Like what?"

"Like you're -- ask me a question that matters." He scowls at her, willing her strangely coy look away. And he does, 'cause the way her eyes look at him before they close breaks most of his resolve, wants deep in him to protect that soft timidity he thinks that was.

"You're not gonna hurt me," she says like it's a confession he already knows, one of her deep breaths to ascertain herself. "And you're going to try to make it good, won't you?"

"I'll try," he laughs shortly, promises lightly. That had to mean trust, it did. "When it's the right time, though." He leans forward, picks a leaf out of where it's tangled in her hair, presses his lips to her forehead.

"Do I get to pick when?" she sighs, her eyes closing when she stretches into him, into the feel of his beard rough against her skin.

"'Course," he says, not really meaning it.

"And we could.."

"What are we doing?"

"Well," she begins, sounding like she won't finish her thoughts. "How honorable are you?"

Just a tilt of his head could let his lips find her throat, mark the pale flesh he missed the taste of, missed seeing his teeth bites on, and just a shift of his hips could have his cock pressing against her, so "Not as much as I could be," because he's thought about it, and he is.

And the cold wind feels hotter, so he kisses her forehead again since it's chaste, brushes the dirt off his breeches when he stands. "I'm not leaving you out here like that, but I'm heading back, yeah."

"So you are leaving me out here like that?"

"Arya," because she's so stupid sometimes, "you're coming with me. Get up."

\- -- - -- -

_To my good-brother, Jon Stark, Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North, and to Ser Gendry, Knight of the Hollow Hill,_

 

_I have taken the liberty of telling Margaery the truth of it and proposing to her an offer of marriage, her hand and Gendry's, the trueborn son of Robert Baratheon. She's accepted with a pardon, but the good news can be told to Queen Daenerys, First of her Name, when you arrive in King's Landing._

_She should remember how the Tyrells of Highgarden wanted the Iron Throne and how the marriage secured between her and one whose kingly reign could be bought before it's began._

_Perhaps she'd be willing to find another match for our Gendry, considering Marg has stated she never wants to remarry and will be inclined to tell our Queen so when she insists upon ensuring the bride-to-be's consent. I wish your family the best; Sansa sends her love, and I send my regards. There's another print of this letter for Ser Gendry, if you'll see he gets it, Jon._

 

_May this spring be long,_

_Your good-brother, Lord Tyrell of Highgarden_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My posting is a smidgen slower because classes, I'm sorry, loves! But I think I'm falling back into routine again.
> 
> Also, uhm. Next chapter does get a bit, uhm. Hot. Sexual. Intense. UNF.
> 
> Prepare your wine, Doc Holland.


	27. You Helped Me Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She feels a thin scar left of the center of his spine, but further down she can feel the dimples cutting into his skin just above the waist of his trousers, so she follows the line until her palms are flat against his abdomen and tantalizingly skimming up so he's grunting brokenly. He murmurs her name, she thinks, her tongue licking at his, his hips heavy against hers, so when his hand doesn't continue up to her breasts but down, down to where she _needs_ him touching so much that she squirms, she feels the heat spread alarmingly to her veins.

In another world, maybe he's more confident and maybe he's cockier and maybe his grins come easily and cruelly with how self-assertive he is, and maybe he wandered into Winterfell the first time like he belonged there.

By marriage or not, though there never was anything short of a guarantee when it came to her and him. There never was, and the way his smirk would look over her would convince anyone in Winterfell of it. He wouldn't have to fight against guards, implore them for just _one_ word from their lady returned. There'd be a single glance, his crooked grin, a casual stroll into her solar with his commanding posture and his bright eyes, and his stubble would be victorious without a question.

It would look like he's more prepared to rescue her and bring about Winterfell's salvation.

He'd say something full of snark, something like _"Missed me?"_ because he had missed her and knew some part of her had to remember him. Nothing else was more sure, his easy laugh when recognition hit her eyes, Winterfell falling to disrepair and rubble around them at the edge of the world.

Or maybe fortune might have turned his way, carried through the winds of sails and horses and boats and gossip, and humility still tred on his shoulders with a cloak of yellow and black and a kingdom and a crown and peasants "oh mercy"ing their praise.

They say it helped make him a better king here, but still, the kingdoms prospered under the reign of a man that had grown up among them. It'd be all but forgotten, however, his _unfortunate_ lineage until a lady shows up to court one day.

She'll stare at the king, and her eyes won't be grey like winter, they'll be grey like the skies against that comet blazing through the skies years ago, and while he's transfixed for just a moment, stupidly stuck on what might have been just to have disappeared yet again, he's laughing, because one of his men will just have told a distracting joke.

He's laughing even as the lady approaches, and he's just staring at the woman while she professes that he looks ridiculous (and he does, though _"none shall look as regal as you, my King,"_ Lord Baelish had assured him) and embroidered and everything he used to hate.

He doesn't silence her; however, he's amused and caught in something of the traditional sins he swore to stray from, the ones like gluttony and lust and sin and hope, but his guard's reaching for the hilt of his sword, and _that_ he does stop.

"Oh, there's no need," she'd hastily say, grinning something wolfish that he recognizes, and oh, _oh_ , it would be her. "No one cares about the life of a bastard boy," though her smirk knew it was her life at stake like the dagger at her thigh knew it would never be.

And he'd tell her that it'd been too long, and she'd blame him, and --

Maybe she was just sent off to the Silent Sisters. And maybe they'd try to stop the pagan believes of a heathening group, some Brotherhood Without Banners, but maybe somewhere outside Riverrun she goes for a walk of fresh air to renew her composition like the Faith does.

It'd be just her luck that there's a wolf, and just her unluck that she's alone save one of those unfaithful knights galloping towards her a breath before she thinks she's dinner. She'd be in the man's arms, half-strewn across his lap in a compromising position so _not_ the faith of the Seven appropriate, and she's sputtering and kicking and he's almost pushed her off the horse since she's blackened his eye.

"What kind of Sister are you, anyways," he curses, except he's laughing next to her ear with his tightened grip around her, never mind that the wolf was really just some hunting hound that wouldn't hurt her. Stupid holy woman couldn't tell the difference.

"The bad kind!" she snaps, and seven fucking hells, it was true, yet they couldn't tell her she wasn't made for the faith since no lost child could be turned away. They needed guidance. Instruction.

They needed to fuck off, honestly, like she tells him that he needs to before she starts struggling in his hold again. "I was just trying to help you!"

"I didn't need it!"

"You had shouted for help," he'll say, before it seems to click in his stupid head. "You shouldn't even be talkin', right?"

But now she isn't talking to him stubbornly, so he just laughs until she does twist to punch him again.

"You hit half as hard as Tom," he'd chuckle, loud and echoing, and he didn't know if it was an insult or not. It wasn't 'till he saw trousers covering her legs beneath the hideous dress that he knew it. "You're as man as he is," but compared to the other girls around here, he fancied it. Even if she was mean and absolutely rigid. "You should loosen up," he adds indignantly, 'cause like a switch how amusing she was became annoying.

"I _never_ ," she'd mutter, never been insulted, never been in the presence of such a wretched man (nor many a man in general), never been unable to defend herself for herself from the trouble she never finds. Never been quite so close to a man neither, so she leans a bit more to the neck of the horse.

"Maybe that's what your problem is," he snorts, making his voice higher to mock her. "I never."

And like every life and romance, he'd grin that dopey grin, and she'd skip and trip headfirst into the reckless abandon of love. It's never that different.

\- -- - -- -

"Of course," he says. "Right. It makes sense." He nods and pushes his hand through his hair, hopes it makes him look like he understands what Jon's explained to him three times. Highgarden and King's Landing.

"Again," Jon starts, because it used to be him once, confused and trying to learn and keep up with who's who. "Actually," he pauses, a rare grin stretching his mouth, "if Margaery is to marry one of the Tyrell's sworn houses, why not Sam?"

While he couldn't tell him who Sam was or why he ought to marry the Lady Margaery or not, he was just relieved she would be wedding someone else, like Jon had said would happen. It's what he explained, just with more _should_ 's than he liked. "Why not this Sam?"

"He's married to Gilly," he says like he's remembering, and Gendry remembers who Sam is, now -- the maester. "And he couldn't marry Margaery anyways; the Night's Watch can't marry."

"I thought there wasn't a Night's Watch anymore."

"I suppose there isn't," Jon smiles, rising up from his chair to stand. "You know Castle Black is still in order. It's where Sam stays with Gilly and their children."

"But they -- Arya mentioned them once. She met a Samwell that was the friend you had, but she said he'd been with Gilly long before. If your men were sworn to.." Oh. He trailed off, because he didn't want to talk to Jon about anything that'd get him gelded. Safe topics only, another hand through his hair.

"Years ago," and Jon was smiling again as he remembered a young Samwell begging him to help him take Gilly away. "Did Arya ever tell you how the Wildlings marry?"

He'd think so, considering how prevailing the theme was. "No, she never did. I thought they were too, uh. Too.. free. For that," he admitted, and yeah. Jon thought so once, too.

"In a way." When he smiles again, he thinks he looks like Arya does those days the rest of the world's gone light and far away, free and good. "You steal a woman, and you.." Jon wasn't meeting his eyes anymore. "You bed her if she doesn't kill you, and then you're wed."

"Oh," Gendry said shortly. That wasn't as romantic as he was thinking it was, but even still -- he's asking before he can think about it, quiet and unobtrusive to the way red's starting to frame Stark grey eyes. "Were you?"

It's a while before Jon answers, hesitance pooling like red into his cheeks now. "Yes," he says. "Years ago." He's the one making admittances this time, sounding almost sheepish, like it was something recent and happy that lifted at his heart. Not like it was sad.

 _"He loved a girl once,"_ Arya had told him.

He thinks Jon loves that girl still, but for just this instant, it means the world that he isn't mourning it right now. He's still living in it, and it's a reminder that bits of the world were renewed and good again after the war.

\- -- - -- -

"Arya," he grins, and she's a sudden smile, too, because he's so infectious and adorable, a bit clumsy when he sets a whetstone next to the sword he'd crafted for her.

"You look good," she observes, walking into his arms when he reaches out. His sweat sticks to her shirt, his soot-smudged fingers stain her cheek. "Happy," and she presses her palms flat against his back.

"I feel happy," he agrees, making her laugh as he bends his neck, roughs his beard against her forehead instead of kissing her. "And it looks like you took this blade to another tree, and if you keep doing that I won't forge anything for you anymore."

"Please," she scoffs. "I know you're making something for me soon anyways."

"What? Who told you that?"

"You did," she tells him obviously, pressing into him. "You're a shit liar."

"I talked to Jon," he says quickly because he's just remembered. That, and he knows better than to chastise her tongue.

She mutters that he's been doing a lot of that, and he tightens his grip when she tries to squirm away. She huffs like it's so unpleasant being crushed against him, but his quiet snicker into her hair tells her he knows the truth of it. "You should stop talking to him so much."

"Should I?" He snickers again, lifts his hand up along her back to curl through the loose hair that's escaped its hold atop her head. As muggy and hot as it is standing just short of the fire, it isn't as uncomfortable as it ought to be pressed close together, his cheek sticking to her forehead, her hair sweaty against his fingers. "We talked about you for a bit."

"Now you really should stop talking to him."

"I think he's my friend," he tells her, and she leans away from him as she laughs, presses back against him when his arm lowers to her back.

"I remember when he used to scare you," she smirks, her lips set against a bare spot of skin at his collar. Her lips are soft, and he tastes like salt when she wets them, and it's chaste when she does step away, her hands falling from the fists she'd gathered at his tunic.

"I'm more scared of Rickon, now." He smiles half-heartedly, playing it a jape though the fear is quite unnervingly real. The boy threatened Shaggydog, but he didn't even know what he did. "And I'm scared of you," he admits in a lower baritone, looking down to her and watching her smile lift its press to her mouth.

"Scared I'll hurt you?"

She sounds pleased -- it's all the negating assurance he needs, he thinks, and he likes the way the flames are yellow in her eyes. "Not physically." He grins like an idiot, 'cause oh, his heart was at risk of being broken by her since he was fifteen.

He thinks that makes her happier, though, his not being afraid she'd take Needle to his throat while he slept. While it could be the truth, he knew, she was just a slip of a woman gone trained assassin to teaching children to fight with wooden swords in the practice yard while their parents forgot there'd ever been a need for bloodshed. Maybe there wasn't here.

"You don't have to be," she promises softly. It's sincere until she yawns loud and big, her eyes squeezing shut and her hands reaching out to him blindly. "Can you take a break?"

"I could," he chuckles, because she's sleepy and that affectionate state of cuddly she gets, nevermind it's the middle of the afternoon. Today was slow, anyways, just some weapons needing to be rebalanced and horseshoes to fix. "Long day?"

"I've just been with Shireen," she murmurs, taking a vice hold of his arm as she moved towards their back room. "It was exhausting, all she did was talk about some sort of reform, and -- sleep." Her hands are fierce as she insists it, forcing him onto the bed and pushing him all pliable to how she wants to curl up.

"Alright," he hushes, his cheeks slightly red in amusement at how grumpy she's turning, "alright, I'm moving, c'mere. Stop," he demands. He curves one of his hands along the back of her knee to tug her closer to him the way they like, and neither knows too much about sleeping with their own space anymore. She wouldn't want it when Gendry's cradling her close to him since it's a habit of fitting close together and perfect like this. They know how they piece together. slotted arms and legs interwoven, and her nose breathes in his smokey scent at his neck as she falls asleep to the soothing pattern of his fingers against her back.

She hasn't been snoring for long when he tries to sneak off, a few minutes, maybe, but repairs can't work themselves. As much as he'd like to, he can't stay and waste away the day with her, so a careful arm to distance himself from her, the creaky bed groaning when his bulk of weight shifts, he curses loudly when she stirs and nestles more closely to him.

As sure as anything, he won't get a lot of nothing finished with her in here subconsciously distracting him, so maybe he ought to just bring her to her own room like he did once. She hated it the next morning, but he figures if she sleeps all day, she'll be awake all night, and it does really prove him stupid if he's thinking there's no better torment than her anger and her mouth.

He lifts her as carefully as he can, resigning to take her away for his sanity and for her sleep so any loud hammering won't rouse her awake, but she clutches that ragged, old blanket instead of him, nearly curls out of his grasp all weak-limbed and tired, dead weight when her hands drop it. She'd never been good at holding onto things, except she always has, and she's mumbling incoherent nonsense into his shirt as he tries to balance her in one arm and keep both of them from toppling over.

He does nearly drop her when he bends for the blanket, mindfully wrapping it around her as best he can, a fool for the way she sighs and burrows into it, into him. She'll have to bring it back, though, else he'll freeze tonight if she's too miffed to keep his bed warm. He finds he's hoping she won't be, but he's prepared to enter the halls of Winterfell as subtley and inconspicuously as he can all the same.

He thinks so. The winds are rough today, the grey colors of House Stark are alive in the air tossing their banners about, and it's a pleasant breeze, a cool burn in his lungs like when Yoren would say a breath of frozen air kept their innards healthy. Or just frozen, so he's happy Arya got so needy for the blanket in her slumber since she's all bundled up.

"Well, this is certainly compromising," a voice says, and then again, maybe he's not so happy at all as his guilty eyes flash down to the Imp's mismatched ones.

"She fell asleep," he whispers indignantly, an excuse that's true but still manages to sound like a lie when he's being smirked at like that. "I'm just taking her home, is all."

"Yes," Lord Tyrion says. He's smiling at him a tad gentler now, like when he asked him about lineage and lemoncakes, when something in him felt like apologizing for something he wouldn't quite say. "She does look exhausted."

"Must be the politics, I suppose." Definitely so if the reform the Lady Shireen was talking to her to was about the educational nonsense she wanted reinstated throughout Westeros. "I'll be on my way, m'lord," he mumbles, still quiet so as to not wake Arya, a polite bow of his head as he makes for the few steps to the wide doors.

"I'll join you then, milord," he says, all cheer and short legs stretching to keep up with him.

With his arms too full of sweet-smelling, snoring girl, it's a hit he doesn't need, makes his shoulders tense. " _My lord_ , then," he apologizes gruffly. "Begging your pardons."

"No, not.. me. I was addressing you, milord," Tyrion says, like he's disappointed he doesn't understand how clever he really is. "I haven't seen much of you in the past weeks."

"I haven't seen you either, m'lord."

"I've spent some time in the surrounding towns, getting to know the smallfolk and their feelings towards our Queen. I've gotten to know the brothels, too. You could accompany me to one these following evenings. I'm not departing these rustic frozen wastes just yet." He held open the door for Gendry, and it was awkward -- though he said the words like he was jesting a challenge. "Pardon me, milord, but I'm not sure you'd stray from your She-Wolf. Or if she'd let you."

"Yes," Gendry murmured, like he'd ever want to anyways, but he kept walking.

"A few of her brother's men suspect she has a wolf's fangs in her cunt," he says idly, just making conversation. "More bite than howl, more rabid than tamed, whatever you will."

"Don't talk about her like that," he snaps harshly, quietly, far kinder a threat than anyone speaking of her that crudely deserves. Tyrion Lannister was a lord, though, and close to the Queen. He couldn't just go and punch him like that sod that spoke dishonorably of Shireen.

"I mean no offense," he says quickly, holding up both his hands in an appeasing gesture. He laughs with a twinkle in his dark eye, keeps strolling leisurely next to him. "It's just what they say. You've heard what she had done to a bannerman?"

"One of Jon's?"

"A Karstark's," but yes, he recalls grimly. He remembers her face when she told him, hears her say it again like she did months ago. _"Killing doesn't make me feel a thing,"_ and he really should have believed her. "Rumor and speculation, however."

"Aye," he agrees roughly.

"Like the fangs," the Imp nods, but his eyes quizzically peer up to Gendry like he'd tell him if it was true or not.

"Aye," he whispers again, but just 'cause he'd believe the truth of it himself.

"Truly?" He sounds impressed.

Gendry snorts quietly, waves the hand at Arya's back lazily instead of bowing, and he hears the lord's animated laughter as he walks the opposite way.

\- -- - -- -

She awakes hours later to a hushed knocking on the door, her room's door, and her drowsiness is replaced by annoyance since he'd taken her back to her room. There isn't light pouring through the window, so it must be night, so perhaps if she'd just lay here, whoever needed her would leave if she didn't go to the door.

Or they'd just walk in.

"Are you awake?" he asks, his head poking around the doorframe, and because it's Gendry, her anger melts away just a little.

"I've been up for hours," she lies, _obviously_ , and she reaches off the wide edge of her bed, sets a flame to her bedside lamp.

It's enough light to see her bed's portion of the room, his dark, smokey blanket wrapped around her with the other warm, embroidered ones of her bed kicked off to the foot, and she sees her boots left just a little ways away, smiles when she realizes he must have removed them for her. She isn't so brashly mad he left her here now; she's just happy he came back, like her not being in the smithy by nightfall was something he needed to remedy.

"You've slept a lot today," he observes softly, stepping in just a smidgen so no one would see him waiting in her doorway. He just settles for closing it, though, illuminated against it when he leans back. "Are you feeling alright?"

How sincere he sounds brings her focus back, and his shirt's untucked, his hair wet and darker just over his eyes, and he's probably warm and smells like soap, and she really shouldn't have slept so long and missed all of this. "I was just tired."

"Shireen can be exhausting," he quips, something vague to how Rickon must feel, but it's rather awkward all of a sudden.  
Like they're standing outside the bedroom door where she's thinking for the first time she'd like to kiss him, but he's stoic and stalwart and leaving her breathless as he just walks away with his eyes leaving her lips. "I probably shouldn't be in here," he says next, a short nervous laugh as he scruffs his hand against his beard. "You might get into more trouble than I will, though."

"Not if I were a lady in a lord's bed," she snickers, sitting up fully and swinging her legs off the edge of the bed. Her toes curl automatically to stave off the cool of the floor, but this isn't the forge when the fire's died, this is her room in Winterfell, and she's the summer child that doesn't know what feeling frozen is. "Did you come here for me?"

"That, and to get my blanket back," he admits. "But mostly you."

"Worried I wouldn't come back?" It's a mean joke; she buries her grin into the coarse blanket when he frowns at her, and it's all the reminder she needs that he's sensitive and sweet and a bleeding sod. "I think I'm keeping this," his blanket she wriggles and worms into, curling back onto her bed, toes disappearing beneath the linen.

"I'll need another," he remarks, sounding like he's fret with another nervous laugh. She hears his steps but not the heavy thud of the door -- opening her eyes, he's standing in front of her, pulling at the fine blankets she'd kicked down to the foot of the bed. "I'll see you tomorrow, then," he whispers softly, ensuring that she's all tucked in the way she likes.

She catches his hand when his fingers gently trace the curve of her cheek, and she's asking him to stay while he says he can't in the same instant, and they're back outside the door to her room again, months ago.

"Please?" But he just laughs at her, bends to kiss her forehead.

"I shouldn't."

"Gendry."

He scowls at her like it's so awful, annoyingly tense and rigid and huffing even as he clambers over her, but then he finally stills, and seven hells, it's like he's melting into how soft this bed is. "This is so nice," he mutters after a pause, when his sore muscles are surely in heaven and she's wriggled so she's facing him.

"You're so stupid," she laughs incredulously.

"No," but yes, her jibe doesn't matter when it's tongue and cheek. "This is nice," he breathes, shifting his head just a bit so it's actually on a pillow, and oh, if it isn't just the softest damned thing. "This is.. oh, I could live in here."

He grins at her, that dopey smile that takes years off of his face, but it isn't until he bursts out laughing that she giggles despite herself and presses closer to where the blankets are weighed down where he's laying on them. "What is it?"

"Do you remember that song?"

"Which song?"

"Tom in the hall when we'd come in from the forge? About featherbeds?" And he hates that song, truly, it's awful with horrid lyrics and a melancholy tune and a theme he doesn't want named theirs again. Featherbeds are just the best thing since the baker started selling his loaves of bread already sliced is all.

"I wasn't listening," she admits, trying to think back. Most of what she remembers is just their fighting on the smithy floor, her dress torn, his red cheeks, stained clothes. "I remember talking to Ned that night, he was talking about his family's sword."

"About all he had in common with you." He sounds bitter and green with envy and not bothered by it at all with how soft this mattress is. "Why don't you ever want to sleep here?" he wonders aloud, shifting and wriggling so he's under all the covers, too.

She doesn't wait for him to get comfortable before she assaults him. She all but wraps herself around him, slips her cold fingers under the back of his shirt just because he's warm and hisses like he's in pain. "You're usually not here," she says easily.

"Usually," he scoffs, his eyes meeting hers, the blue bright where the lamp reflects in them. "This is nice," an afterthought he repeats, quiet and sober and staring at her like that.

It's making her nervous. "It is nice," a soft whisper. She can feel her cheeks start to burn and bites at her bottom lip with a glance over his shoulder.

"Arya," he says quietly.

She can feel a warmth in her chest when he looks back to her. He lifts his hand so his thumb gently tugs her lower lip free of her teeth, and her heart starts to quicken as she subconsciously closes her lips around the tip of his thumb and her the tip of her tongue sweeps over it.

"Arya," he repeats and leans forward to kiss her.

His lips are insistent, urgent, warm on hers, and he tastes eager, she thinks, when his rough fingers slide down to her chin and angle her head up so their kisses are easier, but then his tongue slides against hers, and she isn't thinking anything at all.

Her bed doesn't creak when he shifts, moves one knee between hers so he's leaning over her with his mouth never breaking from hers. She tips her chin to make the stretch to his lips easier, skims her fingers further up beneath his tunic, and with an impatient huff against his cheek, she struggles to get the offensive article over his head. He sits back with a low, husky laugh, helps her remove it easily before leaning over her once again, his breath hot on her neck and his tongue hotter against the hollow of her throat.

"Gendry," she whispers, a hitch to her breath. Because there's no creaking mattress or crackling fire, it's so quiet, so muted save his groans into her neck, the whispers of the blankets around them, her breaths and her sighs and loud thoughts turned to whimpers as he laps his wet tongue over her pulse. "Bite?"

He nips at her pale skin gently with his teeth, tugs at it like she moaned for him to until she cries out and bites her nails into his back. He soothes the burn with his tongue, tastes the salt on her skin with his saliva and something so _her_ he kisses down her neck to her shoulder. She writhes beneath him and presses up, her hips wanting that warm friction from his that they'd found that day on the forge floor, but be moves one of his hands to the safe curve of her hip, his fingers burning heat through the cloth.

It's a moment before she realizes he's holding her still and keeping her pinned to the bed, but her hands tug at his hair to pull his face closer to hers, and they're kissing, and she can feel his moans reverberate through his chest against hers when she reaches down to his shoulders like she needs to, not just because she wants him close. Her lips brush against the sharp curve of his jaw, the spot where he sometimes has nicks from shaving, and since he's moved to support most of his weight with his arm nestled beneath her head, he's flush against her where she can feel everything that has her gasping.

"You're perfect," he swears breathless and reverent, trailing his fingers up the cloth covering her hips to raise along her rib bones.

She means to say he is, too, yet she doesn't know how, couldn't if she wanted to. He silences her moan with a kiss, his mouth tender to her bruised lips, and she slides her hands over his back, feels the heat of his skin, the firmness of his muscles. She feels a thin scar left of the center of his spine, but further down she can feel the dimples cutting into his skin just above the waist of his trousers, so she follows the line until her palms are flat against his abdomen and tantalizingly skimming up so he's grunting brokenly. He murmurs her name, she thinks, her tongue licking at his, his hips heavy against hers, so when his hand doesn't continue up to her breasts but down, down to where she _needs_ him touching so much that she squirms, she feels the heat spread alarmingly to her veins.

"We should --" she stammers brokenly, and he's frozen over her, his breathing just as ragged as she sounds. "Not tonight," she finishes quietly, a reluctant gasp that surprises her since he was the one that bothered stopping them when passion and need and love became too much. But just not tonight, not in a room she only liked this instant because he was here with her.

"Alright," he whispers tenderly without bothering to ask why or coerce her or things like the waif told her men might sometimes, and when he kisses her this time, it's sweet and it's soft with his hand brushing her cheek tenderly. "I do need to.. be back in a moment, 'less you're not wanting to stay here tonight," he mumbles quiet and sheepish.

"I don't want to move," she murmurs into his chest, but he's an apologetic smile as he rolls off of her.

"I'll be right back," he assures her. His ears are red like the back of his neck, and he lazily tugs his shirt back on before he disappears out the door, into the dark.

She feels powerful and feminine and beautiful and insane as she grins into her pillow, a silly squeal as she hugs it and smells him. Her neck feels sore where he's bitten, but the rest of her.. oh, gods, it's dizzying.

The door creaks open a bit later to let her know he's back. His smile is shy when he moves for the bed, pulls his shirt over his head, burrows into the blankets she's help open for him. "Sorry," he mumbles.

"Don't," she whispers contentedly, curving back into him. He wraps an arm around her back and tugs her into his chest, and he's still warm and solid and fit perfectly to her, all slotted arms and legs and her head tucked beneath his chin.

\- -- - -- -

"Gendry?" It's Shireen standing there hesitantly in the entry of his smithy, and he's never caught her here alone before, not when it looked like something was wrong.

"What happened?" He wipes his brow with a rag that doesn't look too clean and takes a few steps towards her. She has one of those smiles that's a lie she doesn't know other people can identify, but she's supposedly his cousin and a sweet girl, a kind person, and he already feels like he ought to protect her. "What is it?" he repeats, a furrow at his brow.

"It's nothing," she assures him, sniffling quietly. She straightens her back, raises her chin, laughs as she says it. "You have the same jaw as my father did. Stannis."

She'd been saying lots of that recently, though, and it always made him fall silent.

"You're about as tall as he was, too," if she can remember correctly, she thinks, she almost can't anymore, but he's at a loss of what to do until she's walking towards him and reaching out tentatively before just wrapping both her arms around his stomach.

He's stopped a breath, 'cause he's gross and sweaty and smells like coal and would probably ruin her dress if he touched her since she _certainly_ wasn't Arya, but this was his cousin. He knew what it was like to pretend for a bit, so he raises an arm awkwardly to her back before patting her warmly, maybe like a father would, and her shoulders start to shake at the familiarity.

"It was around this time when he died," she explains, sniveling. "A couple years ago, but no one knows precisely when. Beyond the Wall."

He knew enough to suppose what happened, but he wouldn't bring pain to it by asking. He could do something else. "You could tell me about him," he says, since she's pulled away from him and settled by the door, since she's always asking him but he never wants to hear.

"Alright," she mumbles watery, her eyes pink. "I'll tell you about Stannis Baratheon," but she doesn't sound sad like she might. Loss is a lighter thing over the years, maybe.

\- -- - -- -

"I think I'm a Baratheon now," he tells her quietly, a hushed laugh into her chestnut hair.

"Are you? My day didn't go quite that well." She smiles into his shoulder, shifts so she's laying flat against him in the small forge bed. It's so much better than feather -- his arms tight around her, his legs trapped between hers.

"Yeah," he murmurs, lightly tracing her shoulderblade with his thumb. "She misses her father."

"Lots of girls do," and the glint of her smile is so like Jon's, something too bright to be as melancholy as it used to be. "Boys, too."

"Not really," he whispers in jest, letting her laugh against his chin. "I'm going to tell you something I likely shouldn't, though, so be good about it, will you?"

Her nod's more automatic than anything, a poor testament to anything he says, but it isn't until time catches up that she realizes what she'd heard. "What is it?" she demands, half-flailing around. "Is it Jon?" Her nails at his shoulder, she pulls herself over so she's propped ontop of him with her elbows too pointy on his sternum. She grins when he winces and tugs at her arm so it's flat on his chest, something bringing them just a bit subconsciously closer when she drags her fingers through his hair.

"I'm rethinking telling you," he admits.

"You haven't yet. Tell me," she demands, her grin stretching so she looks bright and happy here with him, in his bed, where all these amounting conversations linger in nerves.

"Jon," he blurted, quicker than the change of his mind could be since she was looking like the cat that ate a pigeon. "He used to be wed."

"He --" She's hurt for just an instant, because she'd never known, but it's like what she did to him, so she can't be. She stares down at Gendry with his eyes piercing into hers and expecting her to hold this secret, but she just sees what Jon might have had, and her heart's light and warm and happy Jon had been. "He had this," she marvels, tracing his jawline with her nose.

"I think it was different," but _stupid, we'd have heard about the Commander of the Night's Watch's wife,_ so he shushes her with his arm tighter around her back, stops for a breath when she drapes her leg over both of his. He swallows thickly, and she laughs, and helps her slide just a bit up, so they're hip to hip, fit around each other.

"You know I love you, Arya," he says, not too sure why, lowly and starting from the spot in his chest she'd only ever reached, like how he'd told her the first time and it wasn't like the only time he'd ever said it.

"I love you," but she waited to say it, felt how true it was so much that it burned at her eyes annoyingly, made her legs feel weaker when he'd smiled back.

His pulse was strong beneath her hands, his heartbeats rhythmic in his chest, and she traces his torso lightly from his collarbones to his abdomen, over his ribs and further up his chest. He doesn't stop her gentle exploration, just lets her drag her nails lightly over his shoulders, over his muscles that tighten beneath her touch. He sees her cheeks burn a faint, lovely shade of pink, like her lip when she chews on it nervously, and his heart's speeding up, thudding quicker in his chest with her eyes telling him she feels it.

He kisses her before she can remark on it, leans up to close the space between them so their lips are bruising and quick though they can't breathe, then the moment's right there.

She doesn't know how he went from kissing her a little to kissing her like _this_ , but his hands slip up beneath her shirt as he turns her, rolling them over so he's looking down to her, and when he kisses her again, it's deeper as he sinks into her. She can't catch her breath, but she keeps kissing him back faster and urgently, her tongue licking at his.

Her breath hitches when he presses hard against her; she groans breathy into his mouth while he murmurs something like _alright_ , and it's only when she lifts her legs so her thighs are around him that she realizes he's completely stilled himself. He's looking at her lovingly when she opens her eyes, his own a question she realizes now that he's asked, his fingers gentle on her stomach, raising the hem of her shirt up just barely.

"Yes," she answers, a quiet whisper, and it's thrilling, thrilling and terrifying, when he drags her shirt and the slip of a chemise beneath up her sides, his hold as soft as his eyes peering down to her. He uncovers her skin slowly, so there's time for either of them to refuse, likely, but his coarse fingers brush against her ribs in whispers of skin, and it's instinct for her back to arch, easier for her clothing to be pulled and tossed off the side of the bed.

She calms herself with a breath, her hands gripping his back lightly because she needs him to steady herself though she's laying flat, supported, bare from the waist up, and she can feel it. His eyes are transfixed on hers, though, never straying down, smoldering and melting her, making her shiver, but his hand doesn't leave the safe curve of her waist, the sharp press of her hip.

"You're beautiful," he says, grinning like she truthfully is, his eyes soft on hers.

"You haven't even looked," she mumbles, because she's feeling nervous now. Heat spreads its pink from her cheeks to her neck, the tops of her breasts, and his grin widens to bright and amused before it fades entirely, serious and somber when he gazes down to her body laid under him. His eyes darken to black; it wasn't just her breaths she heard ragged and loud and breathless, and he lightly moves his hand up from her hip, up gently so his thumb brushes under the curve of her breast.

"Gendry," she whispers, shortly with a bite at her lip to keep herself from pleading, because she will if he doesn't touch her, if he's so still when she's squirming and writhing and _hot_.

"Arya," he chokes, and he draws his thumb up to brush over her hardened nipple, brings his mouth back to hers for a kiss that feels different.

She gasps with an arch of her back up to press into him, her nails at his shoulders pull him down, and he groans deep from his throat, feels the hot, tight peaks of her nipples as they're mashed to his chest with their bodies, skin and burning and _oh_ , she cries out with a strain, her center rubbing against where he thrusts up into her.

His hands are so warm over her clothed hips, his fingers splaying to the sweat-slick skin of her abdomen, the fabric of her breeches at her waist as he holds her like she's nothing, lifts her hips to press into him, and it's like she isn't wearing any clothing at all. She imagines she isn't for just an instant, all of her skin bare against his, her red cheeks panting and roughened by his stubble, his kisses straying from her mouth to her collarbones, and with her legs slotted over him, the thinness of her breeches and the wetness of her smallclothes separating herself from him, it's enough to ruin her.

"Imagine this without clothes," she says, a harsh breath sounding needy as he thrusts up into her heat again, friction building, heat spreading everywhere.

"We will," he murmurs, a whisper of his tongue at her throat, as he roughs her neck with his teeth, marks a way down to the tops of her breasts. He doesn't know much more than instinct and wanting to taste more of her skin, but she's tugging her hands through his hair, wriggling because their hips aren't aligned since he's shifted so his stubble is rasping against her sternum, between her breasts. He fancies to think he'd ask her permission if she wouldn't hit him, though she's panting as he skims his fingers up her sides, curls his hands around her breasts gently, so soft against his rough skin, and she feels so warm in his hands, so _good_.

He hears her hollow laugh, wonders if he'd said it aloud, but he covers one pink nipple with his lips, kisses the hard peak of her softly, and she's a cry like a low scream, her entire body moving under him. He licks around the tip of her other breast, bites at her pert, tight nipple gently with a faint trace of his teeth to marvel at how sensitive she is, and he's a losing battle of will, a laughable result to what he thought would or wouldn't happen when he's a groaning mess against her flesh, words kissed into her skin when she tugs his face back to hers harshly, demands another kiss with her teeth at his lower lip.

"You have t-- to do more," she says, wrapping her legs around his waist, her heels locked just above his arse, all of her body pressing up into him. He can't manage a response, can't think, just wonders if there's more honor in seeing her face when she finishes like he saw once instead of leaving her gasping and writhing on the bed with her hair splayed over his pillows and her mouth open and whimpering. " _Gendry_ ," and she's demanding, begging, clutching at his arm, so he sinks his teeth into her shoulder.

"I've never," he admits, feeling like his fingers are fire along her abdomen, slipping down over her quivering skin. He isn't thinking of what he hasn't, though, he's thinking of what he wants to do now, how her hand wraps around his, his palm flat to her stomach, and slips it the rest of the way beneath her waistband. "You'll have to --" He's unable to finish when she groans a breath away from his ear, pushes her tits against his chest. "Arya," he whispers, a reverent moan that has her lifting her hips up as she guides his fingers beneath her smallclothes to feel how warm and wet and sweet she is.

And she is, and wonder is frozen on his face when she wisps a quiet laugh, tells him he looks stupid like that. But then he's stroking his fingers slowly against where she's wettest, gently exploring the unseen secrets of her he's marveling at, and her laughter turns to a desperate moan, her hands moving to grip his arse. "Like that," she gasps, flexing her thighs around him, trapping his hand between them. It's better than her fingers, better than anything, and her back arches off the bed again when he finds that tight little knot of flesh with the pad of his thumb. He rubs it harder when it makes her body spasm and her legs tremble around him, presses his other fingers into her, and she grabs at him desperately, pulls his mouth to hers for an urgently lazy kiss she moans into.

His fingers coated in how wet she is, softer than anything, easily slip inside of her when her squirming and rubbing against his hand offers him that much more of her, then she's so tight, pulsing around two of his fingers moving inside her and sparking warmth and sensation all throughout her, and when it happens, he has to watch.

She scrapes her nails against his back, tosses her head to the side so she can breathe, and the noise she makes when she finishes, when she trembles and quivers and tightens and curls in the pleasure shaking her to the bone and melding her into him, and she's beautiful.

She can't draw a breath, but he's certain if she so much as breathed on him anyways he'd finish with how hot his blood's pumping and his heart is beating now, so he shifts the arm that's holding her, watches her fall from bliss to ease under him, a slow grin captivating her sweaty, disheveled face. She's still the most beautiful thing he's ever seen, her grin turning to a softer smile on his cheek with his name a soft, breathy kiss, and then she says it, quiet and tender. His heart's giving a tug where hers is still erratic.

"Can I touch you?" she murmurs, pink-cheeked and dizzying, setting a hand to his abdomen when he moves to her side, facing her.

"You can," he slowly whispers, raising a damp hand to her cheek to caress it gently. "I don't think I'll last, though."

" _Shhh_ ," she insists bossily, her face hotter to his hand when her own slips under the laces of his breeches, flattens from down from his abdomen to grip him where he's painfully hard and straining against the fabric.

"Oh," he says, stifling a curse with a low groan and screwing his eyes shut. She gasps, too, moves her hand lightly down to the base of him then back up to the tip. More tentative than he thought she'd be, but so _fucking good_ that he's trying to keep from rutting into her hand or into _her_ , his words a choked, broken breath that makes her laugh.

"Really? I don't really know what I'm doing," she laughs, gasps, feels the wetness from his tip hot against her fingers. "No," she hisses, her wet hand slapping at his when he reaches down to guide her movements. "I can do it myself."

He'd rather that anyway, her confident smirk when her free hand splays against his abdomen and feels his muscles tightening there. Everything's hot, and she feels better with her small, soft hand than anything, and "You," he rasps out, swallowing thickly. "You could.. uh. Grip it tighter, if you want," and she does.

Her tiny fist slides tightly over his cock, tugging and moving and tracing the sensitive ridge at the tip with her nails. It's a strange rhythm since her hand is hindered by his clothes, but he's leaning forward and kissing her neck, moaning into her skin as she squeezes him, and "Fuck," he curses under his breath, his hips buckling before he trembles, comes into her hand with a white heat spreading through him, her name groaned into the sweet-smelling air reeking of them. "Arya."

"Gendry," she breathes, a slow smile as she pushes the hair from his eyes and leans into him, wet hand and sweaty skin and her breasts and oh, gods. "That was --"

"Yeah," he interrupts, now that he can breathe, a stupid grin mirroring hers.

"Yeah," she repeats, nuzzling into his chest, curling up to him when he reached over her for his shirt, dried her hand with it gently. "I liked that," she sighs softly, contentedly, tucking her head beneath his chin in the space that'd always be hers. "Tell me you love me again?"

"I do," he swears, kissing her hair, her forehead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There. I don't know if I'm ashamed this was 8k words or not.
> 
> My cheeks are all red. Give me your reviews, xx!


	28. When It Bends

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Gendry, you're so stupid," like she always says it, her dimples pressing into her cheeks. Like she's fond, though, so maybe her automatic response isn't what she means when she moves back into his arms. She steps onto his feet so they're as close as they could be, and with that extra height, his hands flexing at her hips and shifting her just a bit, her loose hair brushing at his cheek -- their lips are close. So close.
> 
> "Gendry," he murmurs softly, watching her grey eyes chance confused, "you're so intelligent." Her laugh is unexpected and a rush of air to fill his own lungs, so he lets her nuzzle into his neck, says it more loudly. "Gendry, you're so handsome."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is for LME.
> 
> I don't know your name, but I'll swear you have me partially in love. With your reviews, your words, _everything_ , and I hope you know you've made me happier than anything and brought me inspiration all anew. You're wonderful, truly!
> 
> All of you loves are, so thank you. xoxo
> 
> Also, there's a reference I made that's pretty rad, I think! Think GoT season two and lemmie know if you catch it!

It's a warm heat that's spreading through his chest, an indeterminable bliss that delays time like the inevitable, lets eternity linger through them slow and sweet like strands of honey pulled from a jar, like the delicate flutter of her eyelashes featherlight on the tops of her cheeks, like the faint freckles dusting her nose like sugar or cinnamon.

It's passing over him like the dark clouds fill the skies sometime, the ones that the smallfolk personify to pray for rain, but like the mountain ranges, too, the moving ones with her handprints all over them, smudged and permanent and fastened onto his heart like it's a sleeve.

He's holding her in his arms, her breath soft against his neck, her sleepy noises hushed out to his skin with the flex of her hands curled around his arm, and with her skin warm against his, flesh and hot and _hours ago_ , he's holding her in his arms, and it might be the first she ever feels like his.

Not like it's something of the songs, something like a dream that has him doubting his existence, their likelihood, her presence here and how soft and compliant and willing she is. No, she just feels like his, curling more forcefully into him since the fire's died and it's cold and he just feels warm to her 'cause he's just about to start sweating with their body heat combined.

She feels like she's his because he doesn't question it, the rough of his palm flat against her back to nestle her closer to him, because she chose to be here. He doesn't think it's fate or chance or happenstance or predestination or luck or the Stranger's humor, it was just her. And him. And that should be the simplest thing there is like it always was.

He prefers her wrapped around him more than he does her ten year old knees digging into his back painfully when she'd use to curl up and into him on that damned road to the Wall, though that's how it started, and that isn't to be forgotten.

But it wasn't like she _chose_ him, then, either. Mayhaps it doesn't have to be made sense of, though, not now when he's watching her nose crinkle in her sleep, feeling her sleepy sigh on his skin. His right arm's starting to turn numb beneath her, but he wouldn't move even if it'd be easy, her fingers like tethers holding onto him like her soul.

Her hair drifts with the press of her face into his neck, splays soft curls onto the sheets that smell more like her than him, and she stretches as she wakes, stirs the blanket a lived-in mess around her shoulders, leans into him with more of her skin, more of her sleepy murmurs heating through him. He suspects she'll be the first foot to leave his bed again, a glancing smirk back because _it's just skin_ because _I see you shirtless all the time_ , but she's another deep breath, the tip of her nose tilted so she's feeling the first scruffs of stubble along his neck, and time's gone slow again.

Lingering on like there's no end to it here wrapped up in each other, but the instant he thinks she's fallen back to sleep as easily as he'd always fallen himself for her, he realizes she's just soaking in the present, clinging to his warmth, living in the light memory like it's the soft wind kissing the leaves in the weirwood, like sunlight shining through sheer curtains, like the specks of red burning through closed-morning eyelids and warming everything so contentedly, each breath she draws felt by him and their skin, her fingers softly skimming circles against his upper arm.

It's eased, and it's relaxed, and he can't remember the last time she'd suffered from a nightmare, crawled into his bed because she couldn't sleep from the fits, not because she wanted that human touch she flinched away from the first time he held his arm out to her. He doesn't know why he'd waited so long to kiss her when _this_ felt like a rush of breath to his lungs, a monsoon through his heart, but she's stretching again, shifting her arms so they're wrapped around him, and her eyelashes brush against his cheek.

"Hello," she whispers, softer than anything, her pulse almost center skin to his.

He doesn't know what to say, variants of _good morning, I love you, how did you sleep, it's better with you here, I love you, stop smirking; I can feel it, good morning, darling_ , but it isn't enough, and now he's wondering how a few mornings like this could ever be.

"Marry me," he says in a breath, something so soft that she's frozen for an instant before he can feel her smile against his jaw, her words like kisses to his stubble.

"We are," she hums, and they might be, are to the gods and anyone that needs to know the truth of it outside King's Landing, but he means it different, and she knows it.

"For true," but then she's the first foot to leave his bed again, a glancing back smirk though it isn't just her skin when it's only her skin from the waist up and his eyes too caught to look away for once, and he sighs without feeling exasperated, turns so he's laying in her spot where it's warm, watches her smooth back as she rummages for one of his shirts.

It's domesticity he wants to get used to no matter what Jon thinks he's planning, and it's the next seventy years of his life somewhere. Doesn't have to be here, just has to be her, and she's a snarky grin like a fight when she looks back to him and does up the laces to close her-his tunic. "A cottage somewhere?"

"Or a wagon, if you want to travel," he mumbles into her pillow, smiling like a found lost man into the scent of it. "You're gonna have to stop leaving here one day," 'cause it might be harder to when she's looking like _that_.

That does make her falter from where she's tying up her boots, the phrase, his voice when he closes his eyes and his cheeks burn pinker, but it's the thought of coming back that strikes her with a slow grin, a biased understanding since it's anything here that dwells on anything away from the reality of everything else, and that -- that warms her heart a bit like winter, feels like fire to his cheek when she crosses half the room and sets a chaste kiss to his jaw.

"Maybe," she offers noncommittally, a teasing tone as he opens his eyes when she curls her fingers through his hair. "Getting married when we're already believed to be married could cause problems," but it's that he wants, the habit of her kisses, the promise of seeing her sooner than soon 'till it's never their having to part. Something than a straw bed with parts that creak, a single, coarse blanket between them. There should be something better than that, something like a cloak that's _his_ , one he wouldn't just give her at first 'cause she was cold.

He can see the rise of her breasts where the neckline of that shirt isn't doing anything to cover her while she leans so she's bent in front of his face, yet she's whispering to his cheek that she loves him with another kiss, tells him something else so quiet that he thinks she's asking him the question instead, and it's a head rush.

A brush of his fingers weaves through her hair before she's leaning back and walking out with her goodbye over her shoulder, a _that was nice_ repeated with a dazed tone and her red cheeks as she looked back, gave him a look all spice and cream, sweet and smirking and _oh_.

\- -- - -- -

She sees her handmaiden the instant she pushes open her door, the snarky, improper one she hasn't seen in ages it seems, the one she calls her squire when she needs her, but the look on Sarra's face has her wanting to turn back around if the way she addresses her doesn't.

"Milady," she says politely with a timid bow of her head. She says it so full of pristine manner and class that Arya's almost forgotten this woman has ever called her a right bitch and lived to tell about it.

And she'd had such high hopes for this one. She sighs, because "How many times do I have to demand you not call me that?" Her mouths tugs down to a scowl since she'd wanted to be alone or would rather be with Gendry, but she's realizing now that she hasn't done much of anything else for a while. Nothing 'sides him, anyways. "Where have --" she starts, but her squire silences her with a practiced look, gestures too warningly to be polite.

Jon's standing by the windows at the far end of her chambers, and _that's_ why the courtesies. Just not her own, another sigh leaving her as she self-consciously smooths down her hair, subtly covers the right side of her marked neck with her palm like she's stretching it. "What do you want?" The bed's messed like she'd been here all night, but that thought makes her cheeks burn, so she's quick to a lie with an approving look from her squire. "I was just gone to feed the cat."

"Keep her away from Ghost," he warns, all the encouragement he needs to get distracted from why he's here.

Arya rolls her eyes at his pout, but Sarra just tries not to look annoyed. "I try, milord."

"Be nice to Knife, she's a dear," she defends, but they're not listening to her now.

"How's your father?" Jon asks Sarra like he's genuine, and she perks up instantly, a bright, white smile, and fixes her straw-colored hair so it's neat in the knot atop her head.

"He's been faring better, milord, thank you for asking. His heart still hurts from ma's passing, but I know he appreciates all you've done for our family."

"Don't think on it," he smiles.

She smiles, too, says, "I won't," in their easy banter, and he gives her a queer look before focusing back to Arya.

That's why she likes this handmaiden, yes. "Need something?" she questions him since he's noticed she's here, and Sarra pretends to busy herself with something, mumbles something about a feast.

"Just warning you that there's a feast tonight," he tells her simply, looking about the room.

"Warning?" she repeats with a laugh, because oh, her brother knows her so well.

"You would have been informed yesterday," and oh, that's why he was really here, "but no one could find you."

"I was here."

"Sleeping, milord. All day and night," Sarra cuts in, bustling through the room with a pitcher and a suspicious look aimed at her lady. "I kept checking in on her."

Only that was the day and night before last, in here with Gendry, and -- "Yes," she says slow enough that it doesn't sound a lie, but Jon looks like he does when he'd use to catch her and Sansa in their rare, cackling, gossipy moments: disbelieving and the better part of annoyed.

"Held for Lord Tyrion. He's leaving for King's Landing in the morning so we won't be departing together."

"When?" she says quickly. "Will you leave?" And Gendry, too.

"Not for a while." A short while, but the way he replies sounds reassuring, like he's gently missing his hand through her hair. "Sansa isn't here to make sure you look presentable, however," and he's back to being annoying again, a small grin given to her as he moves for the door. He looks like he'll say something, though, but doesn't, so the door clicks closed and Sarra emerges from the adjoining room.

"It's good to see you," she tells her snidely, opening her wardrobe. "It's been days, and I don't like lying to Lord Jon for you."

"But you do," Arya laughs incredulously, not missing the mischief in her squire's eyes. "Did you mess up up the bed yourself?" She nods to the crumpled coverlet and wrinkled sheets, but when Sarra snorts, she notices how the pillows look like two heads have been resting on them.

"Curious thing, no, I came to wake you every morning like I always do."

"Of course."

"At the appropriate time you requested."

"I'll have nothing less," she sniffs, splashing her face at the water basin.

"But I found the most unsettling sight," she continues, reaching for shoes and stockings and ribbons and gods knew what else. Gods knew Sarra's demure tone was a lie, that's what they knew. "Your bed left in this state, and hells, Arya, the _noises_ I heard just walking past this room that night."

"What?"

"The moaning, the groaning. A sound that could only have been this headboard hitting the wall again and again. Your _screams_ ," she said saucily, embellishing just to get Arya's cheeks burning since obviously, the bed sheets hadn't been stained, since obviously, she had checked.

"You didn't hear a thing," she fires back heatedly, because they _hadn't_ , but she bites at her lower lip anyways.

"I don't know if I'm disappointed or not."

"Sarra."

"Not as disappointed as you, likely."

"Sarra! It's not -- we -- you better watch your mouth," she settles for warning, all flustered and scowling while Sarra sniggers.

"Anything you say, milady." She matches Arya's look of friendly scorn with one of her own, then takes one more item of clothing out of a drawer of the wardrobe. An uncomfortable looking pair of gloves, and she nods her head to mean yes when Arya says _no_. "Your brother was telling you to dress proper."

"For tonight," she frowns, considering for half a second to send this handmaiden to the rest she ordered away.

But no, she'd never do that. Sarra had been with the Starks for a long time. Her mother served Lady Catelyn for many years. She taught Sarra how to speak proper. _Properly_. They'd been reacquainted when Winterfell came back to the Starks, when Arya came back to them, too. Then they'd became fast friends like they had briefly as children, and this sunny, fair young woman near her age with wide-set brown eyes had been snarky and quick-tongued and annoying at times, but brazen enough to be kept around in confidence. She was one of the few she truly trusted.

Even if she sometimes regretted it, because then her squire was at her shoulders in front of the mirror and grinning at their reflections. "It was the smith, wasn't it?"

"Who?"

"In your bed? In his bed? We've never actually talked about it."

"Because I've --"

"Been with him," she finishes for her dreamily. "Everyone sees you walking together. They say he doesn't talk to girls, though."

 _Just me_ , she thinks, and oh, it's getting to her head with her pink cheeks, the fit of a smile to her lips. But. "You acting like that is why we don't talk about it," she frowns.

Brown eyes just roll at her in the mirror. "Do you need anything? Is he kind to you? You know about the sword and sheath, don't you? Don't hit me!" She flinches when her hand rises for a weak jab. "No one really says anything, if that helps."

"I guess," she says, still frowning slightly. "What about you?"

"Me? No young, beautiful, maidens' dream of a new stone mason come to take up most of my time. And it _has_ been a few days since I've taken care of you properly, Arya. Which -- bath. It should be near, _nearly_ , I mean, ready."

"You're paid whether I'm here or not," she laughs.

"Yes, milady, but whoever else would you want to talk to in this castle?"

Pfft. Nobody else, surely. Right.

\- -- - -- -

He doesn't hear her enter the smithy like Sarra didn't hear her leave her room without the elaborate gown she'd picked out just to spite her, so when her arms wrap around him from behind, he jumps, drops a sword unthinkingly into the coals.

"Arya?" He considers reaching for the blade since it's almost finished, since fire didn't seem to always burn him, but her cheek against his back is important.

"Gendry," she sighs happily, lifting her arms up to his shoulders as he turns 'round to face her. "We're going to get -- Gendry!"

"Ow! Arya!" He shouts when she punches at his shoulder, because his hands are pulling the hem of worn tunic up from where it's tucked into her breeches and the belt holding Needle. "I just thought I felt.. there," he says quietly, his thumb gently brushing over the thin scar he didn't really see last night.

It's on her right side, just below her breastbone, jagged from a knife years ago, but the slow way he traces it and smooths over it with his thumb has her shivering. "You didn't see it when you were..?"

"No," he admits, swallowing before his blue eyes brighten in his shy grin. "Wasn't really looking at the scar so much."

"You weren't?" she teases lightly.

And before he slips his hand up to her breast, he smooths her shirt back down so they're decent and proper and last night starting to burn in his cheeks all over again. He draws both his arms on her back to hold her tight, and that's when he responds, a quiet hum into her hair, a deep baritone from his chest. "What were we going to get?"

"Food," she remembers.

Just as he's curling more into her, letting the warmth of her and him and the fire pour through him, she's fighting out of his arms and towards the curtain. "I wasn't done hugging you," he mumbles, hearing her laugh as she comes back with a tunic for him and his cape.

"Gendry, you're so stupid," like she always says it, her dimples pressing into her cheeks. Like she's fond, though, so maybe her automatic response isn't what she means when she moves back into his arms. She steps onto his feet so they're as close as they could be, and with that extra height, his hands flexing at her hips and shifting her just a bit, her loose hair brushing at his cheek -- their lips are close. So close.

"Gendry," he murmurs softly, watching her grey eyes chance confused, "you're so intelligent." Her laugh is unexpected and a rush of air to fill his own lungs, so he lets her nuzzle into his neck, says it more loudly. "Gendry, you're so handsome."

"And strong," she notes, and he kisses her hair, feels that strange sort of domesticity when she reaches to undo the leather cords tying his smithing apron when he reaches for her face. "Do you want to ride out to a town?"

"Same as last?"

"Maybe," she shrugs. "We'll have to be back in six hours, though."

"Six? Well, why wouldn't we?" he laughs, a ridiculous snort, too aware of her eyes on him when he pulls the shirt she brought closed over his chest. "We're goin' to be back before I have to open up the shop again."

His eyes weren't a question, but she just sighs like she's whining, tells him _then hurry up_ since she's anxious by the door, pacing in her impatience. "We're going to be late."

"For what?" he chuckles again quietly, grinning when she pulls a face at him, but he has to stop her hand when she reaches for the door. "Wait," he tells her, smoothing his rough fingers along hers.

"For what?" she mocks, though she sounds the farthest from annoyed.

She looks like she expects him to kiss her again, and he wants to, so he presses his coarse palm even to her small, soft one, just goes ahead and slips it into her hand since she doesn't like ceremony. "I made you something," he explains, since it was always Needle at her hip instead of the sword he crafted -- not that he minded -- and his fingerprints in dark smudges staining her cheeks.

When he's sure her fingers had closed around the necklace, he releases her hand, meets her gaze for the melting grey turning watery. "I'll get the horses," he tells her, a question almost, because she would have hated if he'd clasped the necklace around her if it was fine metal and elegance.

So it's just copper when she opens her palm to look at it, a basic, poor substitute to gold, but its rusted red color would be lovely against her hair, and the plain gift wouldn't bring as much attention to her as shining silver might. She traces the symbol on the small circle pendant, and he doesn't expect her to know what it means, but she's holding it to her chest and looking at her like _that_ and he isn't going anywhere.

"What's it for?"

It's her way of thanking him, so he'll take it when her eyes are all bright like that, soft and happy. "Your nameday. I missed it," he nods.

Her nose crinkles since he's closer to her next one than to making amends for not being here for her last, but she just grins instead and smirks up at him. "You missed seventeen of them."

"Then I.. no," he starts, frowning as she does. "Sixteen of them."

"But this one doesn't count."

"You'd told me before the Brotherhood," he explains. "You got a gift a while later, before Acorn Hall."

"I did not."

"You did." He smiles, and he's tender when he smooths the crease worrying her forehead. "You'll remember," like he's sure, a quick, confident grin that's still soft, leaving her there while he goes for the horses for real.

She thinks she's starting to see it again, and the necklace is warm from their hands, feels wholesome against her skin when she lets it fall around her neck. It isn't directly over her heart, but it feels like it is with the way it's making her feel lighter.

But then they're riding for the town, their horses side by side, and there's enough of the wind to feel free, enough of the sun to feel warm high overhead, like it was always somewhere up there, not gone for months.

"Jon's had me sitting in on more meetings and the like," he tells her. She can't decide if he sounds like he's upset or not. "There's been another man there, though. Some lord?"

"Do you know his name?"

"Wasn't a memorable one," he shrugs. He looks overhead like he's annoyed. "He doesn't know I can read." He doesn't think Jon does either, but maybe it's better for him.

"Wait," she says, confusion ridding at her as she tries to work that out. "Every time I've asked you if you needed me to help read something?"

He frowns, 'cause _Gendry, you're so intelligent_. "I'm not that slow, Arya. Rickon thought it might be wise to seem like I don't know all that much, and then I.. just liked your voice reading to me too much to be annoyed you still thought I was illiterate."

"Wait," she says again, and he just smiles patiently. "What's that mean Rickon pretends not to know?"

"I get the feeling he knows all of it," he shrugs, looking to the first sight of the town in the distance. Not much longer now.

"Possibly."

"Why that face?"

"Just thinking about Rickon," she answers, shifting in her saddle.

"Oh," Gendry nods, letting the silence linger around them comfortably, just their sassy horses breaking the sounds of hooves and nature. "He's strange," he admits, and she scoffs at him.

"And you."

"Have you thought about it?" he asks her, but oh, there's been so much.

"Let's not talk about it," she choices instead, her voice light when his is starting to sour. "Not King's Landing or Baratheons or last night or anything, let's just not talk about it. Not because I want it any different," she hurries to explain, tripping over words like her horse steadies over stone, "but because I like where we are right now, and I don't want anything ruining it."

Her eyes have always given her away, and it isn't like they're running this time. He smiles at her when she starts to look doubtful, and "Alright," he says. "Alright."

When they finally reach the town, he takes care of the horses while she heads towards the Inn.

Hot food was all she wanted, somewhere far away or just outside Winterfell, but she didn't expect here to be crowded so full of people. There's barely enough room to move, and it's a second before she finally looks to the table at her left. "What happened?" she asks, almost a shout to be heard over how loud everything is.

"A fight!" someone yells, and the men are rowdy and guffawing, obviously well into their cups.

"What for?"

"That bloke took Rordy's lass!"

There's a chorus of cheers, a slap of something slopping at the floor, and she fidgets from foot to foot, tries to consider how to get to the counter.

"Wouldn't bother, lad," a man says to her, and she rolls her eyes when his gaze snaps back up to her teats before settling on her face. "Lass!" he jeers like he's amazed. The men at his table shout with another drunken laugh, guffaw more boisterously when he gives Arya's backside a friendly pat.

It's all of a second before a fist plows into the man's jaw, and then another second of shocked silence spreading over the men's faces. Hers, too, because she hadn't gotten the chance to punch the man, but glancing back, _of course_ it's Gendry, his red knuckles settling on her hip.

The drunks start laughing again, though, loud cheering as they raise their tankards to Gendry, but the man he hit howls like he's dying. "I didn't mean nothing by it, is all!"

"Neither did I," Gendry says cooly, squeezing Arya's hip. "But if we're putting our hands where they don't belong, I figured I'd get a chance."

There's another chorus of laughter, the man's apology before he retreats to his mead, and because he feels tense behind her, she moves through the crowds of people with his hand in hers, starts laughing before she can help it as she guides them out the door. "You punched him before I could," she snickers, clasping her other hand around his since he's trying to pull away.

"You don't sound mad about it."

"You do," she laughs, damn-near giggles, and at least she isn't upset he's fought for her honor. Yet. "Where are you going?"

"To Winterfell," he tells her.

Alright, if they're walking, it wasn't more than twenty minutes with their horses' slow gaits here, won't be much longer back. Her fingers are still curled through his, and she squeezes, nudges at his shoulder.

"Are you mad?"

"No." He's reminded too much of Tom and Sid and the other men, and he laughs shortly after that, much to her surprise. "I don't think they'll remember any of it tomorrow. They were drunk."

"I'll remember it," she grins, giddy and girlishly and bright, her rumbling tummy in her hunger, the still slight soreness of her bitten neck, the chafing of her chin from his stubble. "Did you want to ask me something again?"

"Nope," he smiles, a quick glance over at her as they trek through the tall grass, the stony paths. "Did you?"

"Not if you didn't," she tosses back just as innocently.

"I already did," he reminds her, and she _pfft's_ , let's him help her around a tree stump. "This is the right way, right?"

"Yes," she laughs again, the wind whipping her hair around her face. Maybe the walk would take longer than she thought, but less than an hour isn't what used to be months. The past. "That'll be our future, then," she tells him, thinking on it, a married life, a home some place, Jon not such a mother hen.

"Soon," he nods, because he knows that much, just not anything else that could be plotted or planned. Not really. "After King's Landing."

"Why not before? Why's it matter?" She sounds like she's whining, adorable and pouting in these flickers of moments she's more girl than assassin.

"The way I see it," he begins to explain, pulling his hand from her reluctant fingers just so he could wrap his arm around her back and pull her close to him, "is that since your brother and Lord Lannister have managed to forget to tell the Queen I've no interest in her Throne --"

" _What_?"

"Don't interrupt. She'll likely start to feel threatened, or so Willas --"

"You call him by his given name?"

"-- has implied in his letters. If she's never told she's no need to worry on it and plans for.. what's it called?"

"An arranged marriage?"

"What? Arya, no, love, don't inter--ow! Just don't interrupt. Something about dragons. A dance? But if she'll be preparing for the threat of a potential Baratheon, even if she doesn't know his name, well, enough of the past's told us what happens next, right?"

"Wrong!"

"And you shouldn't be.. associated? With me."

"You're joking."

"I'm serious," he frowns. "The Queen's fair and just rule is now that she has no one objecting her reign."

"Did anyone?" But she regrets asking before she can snatch the question back. She remembers hearing word of what happened to King Tommen. "Is that what Jon says?" she wonders instead.

"It's what I think," he mutters, a scowl of his brow towards the rocks they walk over. "So until she knows the truth of it, which Willas is intent on her not discovering 'till Jon meets with her for some reason, I can't do anything that'd get you caught up in it if it goes bad."

"Goes bad? It's not like we'd be traitors to the Throne, Gendry."

"Still," he says quietly. "I was reading over Westerosi history with Shireen."

"Those boring stories?"

"Mmhmmm. Maybe our grandchild will name a daughter after their grandmother."

"Do you really think that's.. rather, that we'll..?"

"That we'll what?" He's an easy laugh like a jape because she's rarely ever gone silent and shy, but the way she said it seemed like a confession, so he asks for her. "Go venture off? Marry? Live happily?"

"Yes," she murmurs like an accusation, like she won't be taking no for an answer.

Like any man would ever dream it otherwise. "It's pro'ly guaranteed that sometime, someday, one of us is gonna want to walk away, Arya," he admits. "Just get mad enough to leave and never want to come back, aye."

True and probable with their tempers, but "What?" she demands, rightfully affronted.

He just continues like he hadn't heard her, scoffs with a _don't interrupt_. "I know it'd likely be better than anything at the time, too, being rid of you."

"Gendry."

"No," he grins, stupid and besotted, pulling her closer to him and their matched strides. He makes his laugh soft somehow so her eyes can't glower at him like looks could kill. Something he couldn't deny without her saying the same, but gods knew he was right in that and this, too. "It'd be such a regret, though. The worst thing in the world."

 _Again_ , but she won't say it with the first look of Winterfell's gates in the distance.

He will, however, because he's heard it without her speaking it, and it's again for both of them. No more just leaving. That might not be too responsible, after all.

"Again, yes."

"Again," she repeats, wrapping her arm around his back, too, warm beneath his cape. "But what if it takes too long?"

"We've the rest of our lives, don't we?"

"We do," she agrees, marveling in it, and when he laughs softly, pinches her side lovingly, it's the start of their sweet silence the rest of the walk home.

The sun's still high enough to warm the chill, and it's a heat that spreads through him slowly when their hands find each other's again. She kisses their linked fingers when she draws them up to her lips, and the look she gives him -- oh, gods.

"What do I say about patience?" Just because he's forgetting every bit of resolve he has when she smirks like that, her eyes a rich silver, her cheeks a flush of red he now knows spreads to the tops of her breasts.

"Not to have any," she counters with a grin so wicked he has to look away.

And he does as they're through the gates and in the courtyard, but it's empty. Not a soul in sight. "Where?" he wonders, but she looks just as confused as he does.

"We aren't late, I know it. No one's at the feast yet."

"A feast?"

"For Lord Tyrion," she nods, everything so loud in the quiet as they walk. "You're expected to be there, too."

"Am not," he laughs.

"Are, too."

"Will not."

"Yes, you will."

"Arya!"

"Is that.. Sarra? Sarra!" she shouts, waving the hand not attached to Gendry. "You remember my squire?"

"Squire?"

"Arya, milady, ser smith!" Sarra's gasping as she rushes towards them, looking frantic and close to tears, and that's when Arya starts to worry.

"What's wrong? Has something happened?" Suddenly remembering, she clasps her hand to her heart. "Surely not your father?"

"No," she wails, hiccuping. "It was -- was Rickon."

"Rickon?" She quirks a brow in confusion, but looking around, she just sees the emptiness of the yard. "Sarra? Look at me," she orders softly, stepping away from Gendry to set both her hands on the young woman's arms. "What happened? What's he done?"

"He fell, Arya!"

"He fell?" Gendry asks. "From.. a horse? Down the stairs?"

"No," and Sarra's wailing again, pointing up to the tower Bran had been pushed from. "He fell! Fell, or he -- no, he couldn't have jumped, but he fell!"


	29. And Some Regret It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you want to talk about it?" he finally asks, soft and sweet, a slight bend to his knees so he's down to her height and level with her.
> 
> She looks at him like _he's_ the madman (and that's all she's been saying to anymore more than usual, _you're insane_ and _you're a liar_ since she's the pettiest, fiercest thing R'hllor ever sent to this earth), like her response should be obvious. "I'm going to talk to Rickon," she tells him flippantly. "I want to watch you smith."
> 
> He almost feels cheap when he slacks the tie of his apron from his neck so he can tug off his tunic, whatever m'lady commands though she didn't ask or demand.

"Why?"

She's asked before she can help it, before she thinks it even matters, because why does it? It made no difference why he fell or how he fell or why he was up there or what he was doing up there or if he just wanted to kill them all by injuring himself. Fucking hells.

"Why?" she repeats with more bite, more desperate demand, but when she's reaching out to Jon, there's the sound of steel's whisper, the Imp about to say something before he silences himself, Jon breathing like a panicked gasp.

"Arya," he says like Catelyn used to, and he looks like he'll retch. He's leaning against the wall with his hands fighting through his hair in a fit for composure, but he's paler like he's seeing a ghost or Bran since the Maester won't let them in to see Rickon.

"If there's.. anything I can do," Lord Tyrion starts hesitantly. Everything about him seems unsure, like he doesn't know what to do with himself. He looks torn between offering his sympathies and apologizing again for both their brothers in the past, yet he coughs like an unbidden, rude, escaping laugh. The past's so ridiculously inane just now, he thinks, and Shireen repeats that Rickon's surely alright since that's what the Maester told them, but something in him feels like he's grieving for two boys now. Or three, if he's remembering young Podrick.

"Why?"

"Milady," Tyrion begins again, though a quick glare from Arya has him quiet.

"He walked away from the fall," Jon says, but he says it just as disbelieving as Shireen looks, her fingers wrought and twisting and fretting at her sides. "He stood up and _laughed_ ," and he sounds like he'll laugh, too, delirious and amazed and _by the gods_ , what does that say more than anything else?

"What?" Arya says, because Jon doesn't look as relieved as he should be if Rickon was walking and not asleep for weeks. "Why?" He laughed? She almost does and probably would if Gendry wasn't keeping a secure hand on her back.

"I don't know." Jon sounds watery.

But Shireen's another steady breath to sooth her nerves, but that's when Arya really sees her. "Were you with him?" She directs it at the girl, but doe-like blue eyes jump at the angered accusation that's crept into her voice.

"She didn't push him," Jon says quickly, and then he laughs suddenly at the incredulity of it all. At least, until it's caught up to him again within seconds, and he doubles over, tears his hands through his hair in a fit. "What's wrong with him to have gone up there?"

"Why was it rebuilt?" Tyrion pipes up unhelpfully, patting at Jon's back.

"Did you see what happened?" She looks at Shireen frown at the door like she could will it open. "Did he tell you why he was.. _why_?" And then the thoughts are too much, thoughts of Bran and how he was to be a knight with her, a wildling ruler with her, a high septon with her, how he's nothing now (which isn't true, but grief blinds her like the outrage of Rickon's stupidity, his _fucking_ audacity to march to the top of that tower and have the _fucking_ nerve to slip), and she presses her hands to her head to squeeze the pressure away, tries to remember that Rickon was walking. Laughing (insanely) normally. He was probably just be examined for precautions or something, not.. "Gendry?" She's whining, but it's still like a fierce demand. "If you ask _why_ again," Jon warns. "Why can't we go in?"

"Why?" Jon mutters pathetically. She'd slap him, she really would.

"He's probably making sure he's fine, is all," Gendry tells her reassuringly, quietly, and it's the first time in this corridor waiting that he looks like he's breathing, the first time he sees the hint of Arya's smile. "He's wolfblood, isn't he?" They're all staring at him now, though, Jon and Tyrion and Shireen, but it isn't just his m'lady that looks as if she'll be lost if he stops speaking. He shifts his weight self-consciously, moves the arm cradled around her so she's closer to him. "He's going to be alright, see if he won't."

"Yes." Shireen exhales, clinging and grappling onto all reassurances and the truth the Maester said, because they're very wise and very kind and saved _her_ life, so surely they could save Rickon's. "I think I can hear him," she says suddenly, and how quiet everything's gone from Jon's heavy breathing to Tyrion's pacing to Arya's shaking makes her want to laugh again.

"He's mad," Arya whispers. She might be, too. Shireen tries to quiet her, but no, no, the fear is coupling with the panic again, the tragedy from the past that's too prevalent when things are supposed to be better, and she's louder, and there's a darkness to her eyes, and she's squirming out of Gendry's hold with a force that nearly has her toppling into the wall. "We have a madman for a brother, Jon."

Even the Lord Lannister's looking up to her like she'll say something profound, but all she thinks is how worried she was for Rickon hours ago. It just wasn't supposed to be anything near as severe as this. Not at all.

She'd kill him herself.

"I'll kill him," she says just as simply, starting for the door with her hand reaching for Needle. But then Jon's shouting, Shireen's screeching something, and Gendry's saying something angrily and just reaching forward with one arm hooked around her to hold her still since it's no effort at all to stop her, the stupid brute, but that isn't what has her flailing. Her fingers didn't close around the hilt of Needle; she didn't touch anything.

That's when she sees the glimmer of steel at Gendry's hip, Needle waisted through the belt of his trousers, and she's cursing him while Jon's shouting at her to mind herself, and Tyrion holds onto the lord's hair, and it's _ridiculous _, Shireen is yelling, "You're all ridiculous!"__

But that's when the door opens to Rickon standing there and staring at them.

He looks to Arya hoisted two feet into the air, her feet kicking and narrowly missing Tyrion's head though he looks so compromising standing there next to Jon. His older brother's gaping at him like he's seeing ghosts again, like he'll cry, but Rickon settles his gaze on Shireen standing there all a fret, and all he says is, "You're beautiful."

It's deadquiet for another instant, but then the corridor erupts in loud hysterics again.

Gendry's shouting just so no one hears Arya screaming _"I'll kill you!"_ with Jon yelling and cursing and hugging Rickon to his chest before he shakes him by the shoulders.

"You're a fool!" he yells, but he's crying for true now until he glances away. "I can't even look at you," he blubbers, and it isn't Bran that he sees now, but Robb. But it's okay, and Rickon's just staring at Lady Shireen anyway before he chances a look to Tyrion.

"Did you tell them you didn't push me?"

"No," the Imp says with a laugh in his eyes, strange sobriety in his voice. "But I was considering it." He really was, with a none too subtle glance to Arya and her accusing gaze predatorily stalking him.

And they're all shouting all over again.

\- -- - -- -

"Do you feel alright?" Gendry asks Rickon a touch awkwardly. He's quiet and somber and stern, the first person the young lord requested to see since the Maester allowed only one person in the room at a time for now.

Of course, Rickon just wanted Gendry in here since he wouldn't shout at him. It's what the Maester wanted, too.

"I do, honestly," he says, a sigh as he reclines back onto the pillows. "Don't feel anything wrong at all." And he doesn't. He's staying in this room for his safety from his siblings, really. And for his thoughts.

"Can I -- can I ask you a question?" Rickon just stares at him. He takes that as tactic permission, a frown souring his face, a want to understand driving him to a sigh. "..Why?"

"That's all I could hear Arya say out there," he laughs. It doesn't sound like a laugh. "That, and how she'll kill me."

"I won't let her."

"She'll kill you."

"Maybe," Gendry says shortly, sulking back to silence. More time in here meant more time out there for them to calm down. "You can walk? Move your head, shoulders?"

"I can."

"No bruises, broken bones?"

"No," Rickon says, a kick of his long legs so his heel taps against the footboard with each point.

"You're sure?" he asks, almost plaintive, but the Starks couldn't lose anyone else.

"Yes," and he sighs it as the Maester says it from the corner, indignant as he readies something.

"What about your head?"

"He says my eyes look fine. I'm thinking clearly."

"Are you?" Gendry wonders warily, leaning forward from the chair with his elbows on his knees. It's then emotion starts to settle in his eyes, fear starting to linger in apprehension. "They say you laughed, Rickon."

"Do they?"

"And where they showed me you landed," he starts, in parts unsure and low. "I don't know much about.. well, that, but I know nothing lands that far away from below after falling. There wasn't any wind."

"Did Arya ever tell you about Bran?" Rickon directs instead.

Gendry watches his eyes turn fierce, sees him grin a grin at the Maester that's all wolf teeth and bite, and the door clicks when the older man leaves. Someone shouts _I'm next!_ but that gets shut out, too. "Some," he admits.

He remembers not being able to sleep one day in the forest, how annoyed he was the slip of a girl behind him kept stabbing him with her knees and elbows, jerking and flailing restlessly in her sleep. He was about to shake her awake so they'd both be miserable and sleep-deprived, but then he heard her crying.

"Bran," she had sniffled, and she didn't need to say anything else.

"He dreamed that when he fell, he was flying," Rickon mumbled. He sounded tired. Like cotton was stuck in his throat.

"Arya had a dream like that once," he blurts, remembering. "Years ago."

"I think we all did."

"Is that what it was, then?" He doesn't sound sure, but neither did Rickon. "You dreamt and woke up?"

"No," he says, shuffling his auburn curls out of his eyes. "It wasn't like that. Wasn't like I woke up on the ground. Not like I stepped off the edge, neither."

"So you did fall?"

It's bigger than all of them again, giants and faith and shadows and the past, the gods, men, and hypocrisy, morality, irony.

"I don't think it was that," Rickon says quietly. So quiet Gendry has to lean forward to hear. "I think it could have been Bran."

He leaned back in his chair, stared at the wall. It could have been."

"That," he continued, his Tully blue eyes mirthful, " or I really did just slip."

\- -- - -- -

"I don't remember," Rickon huffed.

It'd been three days, and he had to tell the story three dozen times, had to listen to Arya and Jon shout at him for five.

"How do you forget something like that?" Jon had asked, unthinking.

That's why Arya's back in the smithy.

Sullen and cross and just a bit sad, he thought. He wasn't surprised to see her when she stormed in, her face a frustrated red, her hair a disarrayed mess of hair mussed loose from her braid. It favored her left side today, not the usual right, and when she seated herself atop an anvil, kicked her feet to tug off her boots and stockings, her dress's hem got a bit too close to the fire.

"Careful," he murmurs, and she's the shadow of a smile, her skirts draped six inches in dried mud hanging around her bare feet.

"Maybe I'll try to make more of an effort," she had told him uncertainly days ago, and that's when she began wearing more dresses.

They'd all been out of sorts then, thanks to Rickon. Jon and Arya were overtly cautious and troubled and questioning just how.. well, how shy of it happened. Why. But Gendry -- he felt as if he understood more. He truly did. He just hasn't gotten the chance to tell Arya yet, to hold her and ascertain for himself how she was handling the quick burst of the past and the horror that must have come with it, though she insisted on words like _fine_. And _I won't kill him_ , yet she had held the sword he'd forged for her to his own neck for taking Needle from her.

This was a different winning and losing battle inside him, and the gods knew that. It wasn't playing chance or cyvasse anymore, it was trying to keep her smile as unguarded as his around her. It almost didn't seem to make a difference that Rickon really was unscathed.

"They're fools," she informs him, glowering from her perch atop the anvil, stewing in her annoyance as much as she can with how happily warm it is in here. The gift of warm toes isn't to be taken lightly, even in anger.

"Rickon's just a boy," he reminds her gently. She scoffs at him, so he reaches out with the tongs as if to pinch her face. That does make her laugh, a bubbling sound that swells joy in his own chest, and if it isn't finally being commissioned for a bannerman's breastplate instead of a simple sword balance's shift, then it's the glint of copper he can see disappearing beneath her neckline, her fingers fretting with the fabric of her dress-sides.

"Jon told him he should kill the boy, whatever that meant," she murmurs when it's quiet when the fire isn't crackling at the watered steel. "Then Rickon said something about Bran flying."

"I think it's why he went up there," he nodded, lifting a soot-covered hand to wipe the sweat from his face. "Just to look down, not to take a quicker way down."

"Do you?" she asks warily. "I don't know what to think. I'm --"

"You're what?" he presses since she's closed off with an angry frown. He reaches for the waterskin she brought, drinks like he's a man dying of thirst as she reaches up and brushes a sweaty lock of hair from his eyes.

It's something he saw her do to Rickon, but there was a reason she resorted to anger instead of feeling the hurt. "You don't take care of yourself when you smith," she tells him to distraction.

"You're what," he repeats, fixing her with a stare that's making her scowl.

"I'm _trying_ ," she hisses, "to not think of Bran and the connections."

"To what?"

"Lannisters," but he's scowling now, and the way she looks away is guilty and small. "I did say I wasn't."

"You know Lord Lannister had nothing to do with it, that he --"

"Said it was Bran?" Her eyes lock to his, so many things misting in the grey, and she wasn't thinking about it. Right.

"Alright."

"Yes," she mumbles, sniffling as she looks away. Just the smoke in her eyes.

"Do you want to talk about it?" he finally asks, soft and sweet, a slight bend to his knees so he's down to her height and level with her.

She looks at him like _he's_ the madman (and that's all she's been saying to anymore more than usual, _you're insane_ and _you're a liar_ since she's the pettiest, fiercest thing R'hllor ever sent to this earth), like her response should be obvious. "I'm going to talk to Rickon," she tells him flippantly. "I want to watch you smith."

He almost feels cheap when he slacks the tie of his apron from his neck so he can tug off his tunic, _whatever m'lady commands_ though she didn't ask or demand.

She just laughs bright and bubbly when he's a dramatic stretch of his arms bent behind his head, his sweat-slick muscles inches away from her until he leans forward so her face is pressed to his bare sternum, and he snickers at the noise she makes.

"You are alright, though?" he finally asks her softly after minutes of standing there with their arms around each other. Hushed quietly into her hair, but she stirs with a jump like he woke her.

"I am," she mumbles, seeming to be, though he knows she's slept poorly the past few nights. She's kicked him in sleep more than usual. "I think," and she's hesitant, a soft sigh when he raises his hand so his thumb traces her jawline, "I'd have done the same if it were me. Seeing Bran."

"..You'd have gone up there?" He's imagining Arya's body fallen from a tower, crumpled to the ground and still since crippling injury wasn't her laughing cheekily at her stubbed toes, skinned knees, pricked fingers.

"Probably." She feels the tension in his arms, what makes it so he likely understands why she'd been so angry while Shireen had been so sensitive, but he sighs into her, grumbles when her hands slide soothingly up his ribs. He's laughing as soon as her touch turns ticklish, though, and when she spreads her thighs so he can step closer to her between them, he's sweaty and loud and looking down to her looking up at him.

Her eyes are ensnaringly bright, and it's that hold like her hands on his sides, too captive, and he's really a fool for not knowing he loved her like children do until she was gone.

"We're fine," she says like she's patronizing him, a soft grin she muffles into his chest. She sounds like she really is, but he does wrap his arms around her tighter, stays there holding her for just a bit longer.

\- -- - -- -

"How long are you going to sit there sulking?" Rickon asks her. He's lounging at his windowsill, using the open light to pen a letter to Shireen, nevermind that her room's just down the corridor.

"A while," she admits, crossing her arms.

"You look like Gendry does," he laughs, cheery and wellness and ease, perfectly fine, perfectly whole, perfectly still a bit insane, she thinks.

"I don't."

"You do." He looks to her again with a scoff, gestures at her lazily. "Silent and brooding. He doesn't really talk much, even when we were learning letters, doesn't really smile either."

He never seemed to shut up around her, though, and all she sees is his self-obsessed his smirk, his grin so wide that his cheeks press up to his eyes, his ridiculous laugh when she gets under his skin when he's nervous, when she wants to get under his clothes, and Gendry isn't solemn at all. Not really. His eyes twinkle even when his lips don't smile, but then he's full of sleepy grins, the lift of one lopsided corner of his mouth in a loud laugh, and --

Well, she isn't focused at all. She doesn't want to think about it really.

Well.

"I know you've said it a lot," she begins, curling her braid around her fingers. She's biting at her lip, and that's when Rickon starts to tense, taut as a bowstring. "But truthfully, Rick. What made you..?" Fall? Jump? Fly?

He's still in the quiet that's broken when Shaggy yawns obnoxiously, but those scant seconds have him saying it softly. It's not his fault that it doesn't make sense. "I don't know anymore."

"Rickon --"

"No," he interrupts, and there's the fight of her little brother, the stern, commanding tone she liked to imagine Robb would have led his forces with. "Let me finish. I don't know anymore, what I was thinking of Bran or why, I just remembered the dreams where he started to fly, and.."

"That's impossible," she finishes for him. "It doesn't make sense."

"Lots of things don't," he laughs. "I was a lord that was nearly a cannibal, and look where we are now."

Where the North doesn't follow a king truly named Stark, and wildling, Skagosi little boys turn into regal, powerful young lords. It didn't even seem to matter if a lady cavorted with simple smiths.

"Did you feel him?" She asks it quick, says it loud. "Bran?"

"I think it was him," he admits after another stretched-out pause, and she can't really be angry anymore. Not when it's so mad it has to make sense.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This isn't what I intended this chapter to be; it's shorter, but it happened all it's own. Didn't seem right to add fluffy bits to this chapter. Only in part, but I hope you enjoyed it still!


	30. I Made You Laugh

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Trust me?"
> 
> "I do," she answers, as automatic and offensive as when she's quick with her _you're so stupid_ insults.
> 
> "I'm not going to hurt you," he swears, but she already knows that.

The moon's barely risen high in the skies yet. The candles have burned and witnessed midnight's coming and going, and he doesn't wake up, of course, he doesn't wake up, but it's difficult to detach his arms from around her, more difficult still to move from them when he's so warm.

This night had been restless like the past couple had, though she had been fine since talking to Rickon, though it wasn't quite the thoughts of her brothers that kept her awake and still to Gendry's soothing snores. His cloak isn't as warm and safe as his arms felt, and she can barely see the shadows of ember and peace brush against his face, but she can see the glint of steel that's Needle easy in the dark.

She can hear him make some sleepy noise and stretch onto the cot in a way that'd likely crush her if she hadn't moved, but she won't be long. She just needs to see Jon, so she does, building the forge's fire back up so Gendry wouldn't freeze before she comes back.

It's not like she expects snow to be packing the ground when she steps out for the quick walk to the castle, but she's still surprised when the ground's wet like the sun will shine it with mildew in the morning. Like soft ice, like spring or summer, she doesn't really know. It's darker when the clouds cover the sliver of the moon, though, and everything's quiet and still and peaceful here in the dead of night, bundled warm in Gendry's cloak with a light visible through Jon's solar.

Of course, he's still awake, and of course, he has the door open and waiting for her.

"Saw me, did you?" she asks him.

Her cheeks are flushed from the brisk walk, her nose pink from the cold, her shoulders dwarfed in a rugged cloak that isn't her own, her shirt all untucked and improper, but Jon's looking to Needle in her hands. She's holding it loose, familiar and unguarded, like it could be a flower or a book if she were Margaery or Sam, and the ease of it has him smiling. He just looks so tired, too. "I don't have to threaten him, do I?"

"No," she says, a quiet laugh as she steps out of her boots (Gendry's -- she couldn't find her own) and plops herself into one of the chairs. Really now, Sansa ought to be stalking through the night and into the kitchens in search of a nighttime snack of lemon cakes. "I wasn't sleeping very well."

His mouth quirks up at that, like he's pleased she came to him instead of the alternative. "Not another..?" He has to ask, however, and his smile's gone quick to sour as quick as it always had. He's genuine concern always caring for her well-being, and this is why she's been running to him since she was a girl.

She shakes her head, assures him that _no, not a night terror_. They've stopped weeks ago, and she smirks when he glances out his window to the smithy. "I was actually wondering about something. Thinking, actually."

"About?" He leans onto his desk, folding his hands atop parchment over parchment with a blank stare at her.

"Do you ever think about the people you lost?" she wonders instead.

And then he closes his eyes, and he sees her as clearly as eight years ago. Snow in her fiery hair, a laugh mocking and loving on her lips. She's calling him a Crow and he's calling her his love, and they're back inside that cave since they've never left it here.

"I do," he smiles, something so wide he looks years younger, mayhaps eight of them, a shake of his head and a laugh that has her hoping he might tell her about the girl that stole him like Wildlings marry. "It's not so bitter, after time."

She doesn't have anything to say to that, so she just sits there and tries not to sigh testily. "Anyone else?"

"Who's on your mind, Arya?"

"Jory came to mind," she murmurs, rubbing her cheek on her shoulder. "Jory Cassel. I can't remember what ever became of him."

"Jory," he repeats, a hint of astonishment touching his voice. "I'd nearly forgotten."

"Me, too." _It's easy_ , but she won't say it.

"And Ser Rodrik." He sounds like he's laughing, and maybe it isn't bitter at all.

"And Hodor," she adds like a giggle. She can see memory brighten Jon's eyes to laughter, too, but it's the thought of all their lost loved ones together out there somewhere that does make it happy. Happily.

\- -- - -- -

When Shireen wakes up, she screams.

There's a body next to her that screams, too, warding her off with her own pillow since she's smacking at him and flailing and kicking and trying to think like Arya would.

"What's wrong with you!" she shouts, because Rickon's shouting with her, screaming for her to stop, that _it's me!_ "Leave!"

"No!" He's relaxing now, his arms supporting his head towards the ceiling since he isn't staring at her, nope. Nope. Nope. "You wouldn't see me otherwise," he tries to bargain with a plaintive tone, half a smile making him seem wolfish.

"You didn't ask to see me!" she huffs, indignant and embarrassed. She wraps herself up in the covers, securely hidden by blankets up to her chin.

It's been six days, and she's still mad about that, and he grins before he can help it. "'S why I'm sleeping with you now."

"B--" she flusters, but the movement at her feet has her flailing again. "Shaggy! Rickon! _Beside_ me," she hastily corrects, turning as red as she's sure Gendry does when she mentions Arya.

"That's what I said."

"Rickon!" She doesn't want to hasten over the difference so vehemently when he's grinning like that, too knowledgable himself, so she slips out of the bed for propriety, still smothered by blankets. "You shouldn't be in here."

When she glances back towards her door warily, he scoffs at her. "But you wouldn't see me."

"I'm cross."

"You're --" he bites his tongue, but she catches the snide eyeroll. "Didn't you want to see me?"

"I didn't want to see you falling from a tower, Rickon."

"But I wrote you a letter."

"I didn't read it," she fumes.

All he does is look at her desk, the weights holding down the flattened sheets of parchment. "You didn't, nope."

"No," but her voice cracks, and she looks back to the door anxiously, can't help but stomp her foot. And she is the Lady Shireen of House Baratheon. Hers is the fury. She means thrice more than any man. "You have to leave, Rickon."

He props himself up, for a second looking desperate and young up on the plush blankets. "I can't. I want you to know something."

"How you got in here?"

"Window," he says shortly. There isn't a window.

"When you said that you were going to see Bran," she starts, because she won't mention a window like that tower though she's thinking it. "I thought you were going for a walk though the weirwood trees."

"He isn't actually --"

Her voice is bordering shrills. Hysterics. "Don't take that tone with me, Rickon Stark."

"I'm just trying to explain," he soothes, but she's starting to pace about the bedside. When she nearly trips over the blankets clinging to her feet, Shaggy's there in an instant. "Shireen."

"Why was _that_ the best way to see Bran?"

She sighs, and Rickon has to remember she's lost people, too. That didn't entitle him to reckless behavior, like Jon had said, like Gendry tried to imply with fewer words, like Arya smacked him. So. "It wasn't," he admits, sitting up to stretch his long legs over the side of the bed.

She steps on his foot delicately. "Then why did you endanger your life? What about your family? _And me_?" She sounds strained, but he just thinks she's beautiful all over again.

For half a second, he's thinking of stealing her like a Wildling, but then he remembers when Sansa gave Shireen her veil and how she traced the pretty sheer fabric, and he'd probably do anything she wanted. Years from now. That could be kinda nice, even if uncomfortable.

"I was thinking about it," he tries again, more slowly this time, each succinct word chosen to ease the lines worrying her face and to make sense of it for him, too. When he said he didn't remember much of it, he wasn't lying. "The crypts, 'cause I saw Jon go down there, but then a part of me was glad. I'm not awful if he can't remember his mother, too, right?"

"..Rickon," but he interrupts her gently, holds up a patient hand like Ned would when he'd mediate family suppers.

"Then I guessed he was going to see Father, but I remembered that night in the crypts with Bran and how much Hodor carried him there somedays and how he was always dreaming about flying out of the tower."

"But he didn't." She doesn't sound quite exasperated yet, but she's pacing again.

"People can't fly, Shireen," he snaps at her, but then -- well. "I _did_ slip. And fall."

She frees her arm to wipe at her nose. "You truly did, then?"

"I did," he says, trying to make his rough voice softer somehow. "It was an accident, but when I was falling? I didn't. I don't think."

"That isn't logical." Her brows crease in a frown, and the mattress doesn't dip beneath her weight when she sits half the bed away from him, still bundled and covered. "You fell."

"Bran," he tells her.

She might not be able to understand all of it, but the North knew the Godswood was Bran for a reason. All of Westeros knew his part in the war against the Others, too. So Rickon didn't fall, no. Nope. Nope. _Don't talk to the gods, 'cause they don't talk back,_ but Bran always preferred actions to words.

So he doesn't say anything else; he doesn't have to. Shaggydog paws at the floor, and when understanding slowly turns Shireen's face to another shade of hysterics, Rickon leans over, hits her shoulder with his forehead 'cause maybe he won't kiss her 'till he's thirty.

He doesn't know much of anything, but it does make sense now. "Bran," she repeats, maybe the first time she's ever truly thought about him, and he nods with her in an ill-practiced awkwardness.

"I'm leaving tomorrow," she adds long after the quiet that settles over them. It's reluctant.

"Today, you mean?" The sun was likely starting to rise.

"No," she corrects. She smiles in that soft way she does, kindness and excitement bursting where anger mellowed away from her. "Tomorrow, but I think we'll be back soon."

"We?"

"Me and Davos, Rick."

\- -- - -- -

"Wake up," she whispers, back safe beneath his blanket, huddled and bundled and watching his eyes squeeze closed.

"No," Gendry mumbles, his throat scratchy and his voice groggy with sleep. He doesn't realize it's her until he's awake when she pinches him, when she presses her nose to his and he stretches, the heat of his body enfolding hers with his arm around her back. "Where'd you go?"

"To see Jon," she replies. "Then to water dance. It's almost finally morning, actually."

"Actually," he repeats, yawning into her shoulder. He stretches again and rolls to his back, taking her with him so her elbows rest over his chest. "What'd you want Jon for?"

She nearly says it before she thinks of a better way to say it, and he smiles like an idiot when she curves herself into him, when her hair brushes against his cheek. "Jory."

"Jory?"

"Jory of House Cassel," she tells him idly.

It's enough to catch his interest, so much that his smile's turned to a shade of a frown to match his eyes. "Who's he?"

"Served my father."

She presses herself more into him, firm, warm flesh hidden in every way but the push of her tits against his chest, holding him captive in a way he just doesn't trust with how demure she sounds. "I don't want to hear about your Jory," he sulks, an annoyed gaze aimed away from her.

"Are you jealous?" Her voice is far too pleased, and he's a gruff _no_ as she slips one of her legs in between his. "He was my friend," she assures him with a smile too soft and her cheek over his heart.

"He might have been," he says. "But I'm confident enough with you."

He's so matter of fact, so petulant that she has to snort the same instant he scoffs into her hair and pulls her up closer to him. She has to curl and wrap around him when he shifts to sit up, his knees drawn up, but her arms easily wrap around his shoulders. "You should be."

He smirks, taking hold of her thigh and helping her move so she's straddling him, but how close his face is, how melded their bodies are, has her face burning.

He'd probably fuck her now, slow and sensuous and lazy and _good_ this morning if they'd already done it before.

The thought's making her uncomfortable and hot enough to stir her hips down in a push against his, warm frustration spreading through her to ruin and need so much that she sighs half in anger at him, but he's moving his hands from her hips to lower.

" _Gendry_ ," she says like a hiss, like a plea or like she's urging him.

His eyes darken from blue to colorless black, and she can see it change his face more somber from the flash of a grin that was bright and playful. He's staring at her focused and intent, warm and soft as if he thinks her to be more precious than anything, and it's a look that catches her heart, has her feel like she's full of nothing but her feelings for him.

Everything might have been so much easier, better, maybe, if they hadn't wondered away from each other or waited so long to do this, she thinks, and the both of them are stupid, foolish to his left arm around her back, his fingers delicately brushing through the ends of her hair, and her legs spreading more comfortably around him with her knees framing his thighs.

"I'm ready now," she assures him, a quiet, authoritative murmur of their lips so close, they could be kissing, but all he does is laugh.

"I'm not," he grins, but he sounds like he's lying or truly does have his reasons, which might make sense, but not with the way he's looking at her, except he's gone silent again, serious, and he starts to lift up the hem of her tunic with his left hand so he can feel that scar he ought to pay more attention to. "I want to know your body first. Before --"

"You're stupid," she cuts him off, of course not really listening as she slumps against him and let's her arms hang limp over his shoulders.

The heat's risen in his face, but he chuckles again more lowly. Almost nervously, yet she's all tense, too.

He can't make it good if he doesn't know what he's doing, but if he can't make it good, she'll make it the death of him. Ruining her on anyone else isn't really ruining her, not with sweet touches and soft sighs and the way her mouth is at his shoulder and her hair at his nose.

"You said it was near morning?"

"Is," she muffles into his shirt, but it's when she starts to detach herself from him that he stops her with a heavy hand on her hip.

"Don't move," he says just because she usually does.

Her eyes glint with confusion until he cups her between her legs straddled over his, the warm pressure just where she needs it, making her shudder and press more into his hand with a gasp. "Gendry," but he's starting to stroke against the seam of her breeches, and it's more her frustration than pleasure. " _Gendry_."

He groans when she tugs at his hair, and she whimpers when he cants his head and kisses just left of the pulse at her neck where he knows she likes his teeth. Her hips are writhing and grinding into his hand to feel just a bit _more_ , ready to rut with as little as she's thinking about all of it, but he helps guide her hips to a pace that's like a slower push and pull, and his name is again caught in her throat.

"Arya," he says, 'cause the feel of them has to build, doesn't it? Her eyes are a brighter shade of grey when she opens them, open and earnest, but it's her teeth biting at her lip and drawing it white that has him leaning forward and seeking her tongue with his. "Arya," he whispers again, hot on her lips, and he's thought about it half a dozen times since the other night and earlier years before, wonders if she's imagined it, too.

Her mouth sears heat to his, but when she bites gently at his tongue, he escapes her teeth to kiss down her chin, up to her ear. "Lay back," he demands gently, gruff with her kiss on his tongue, but she tightens her arms around his shoulders to hold him like she needs the stability. "Lay back," he says more loudly, swearing she rolls her eyes at him even as she makes a whimpering sound.

She's reluctant and full of attitude, but on her hands and knees, her arse in the air before she flops back onto the pillows, her cheeks are red, and she's squirming beneath his heavy gaze. Her thighs rub together when her hips lift just a bit, needy, and maybe she doesn't mind being told what to do after all.

Leaning over her, his large hands smoothing over the dips of her hipbones, he watches her look like she'll burst from impatience or need or his callus fingertips tracing lines beneath her waistband. "Can I?" he finally asks her, a thick swallow, a drag of her breeches off her hip just barely.

And she wants him to, she does, but it's terrifying for an instant as he unknots the first tie with a delicate reverence she isn't ready for. He doesn't go further, though, when she hoped he would so she wouldn't have to trust her voice to speak, yet he's looking at her that way again, the way that smolders her insides, and she's nodding, and his hands gently untie the rest of her ties, slip the coarse fabric tenderly off her legs. He has to move a bit to get her ankles through, but he kisses her knee when he comes back to her, and her leg jumps.

He's gazing at her eyes instead of her like he didn't stare at her breasts when he'd first touched them, and it doesn't make her as nervous when he smiles like that, sweet, lustful. Anxious, like his voice when he clears it, asks next, "And this?"

Her hips squirm again, her bare thighs press together since he's skimmed a finger in the tie of her smallclothes. It's terrifying again, brilliant yet scary, and her voice doesn't sound like hers. "You don't have to ask," she scolds, but if he hadn't, she might not have been ready for him to, gentle and unobtrusive. The hem of her shirt's ridden up to her belly, but she thinks teats are different than cunts, now. Suddenly. Gods. "What are you going to do?"

She sounds far more nervous than she'd have liked as big talk, little do as she is. His smile's gentle when he draws a hand up to brush her wavy hair from her eyes, and as soft as he can with his face burning as red as hers, he just says it. "I'm going to kiss you."

That makes her more nervous, though, fiery and flustered as she writhes again. "Then why do I need to be bare?"

"You --" He stops himself, because maybe she isn't thinking about it, but she's flustered with him seeing her though he's had his fingers inside her. She's ridiculous. And he loves her. "Arya," he whispers. He considers telling her that she's beautiful, flawless, loved, but her hands are curling through his hair. He doesn't know which one of them she wants to distract. "Trust me?"

"I do," she answers, as automatic and offensive as when she's quick with her _you're so stupid_ insults.

"I'm not going to hurt you," he swears, but she already knows that, but her breaths come more regular when he inches her thigh over a bit.

"I'd kill you."

"You would."

"What are you going to do?" she asks again, slightly wary as she props herself up by her elbows, watches his dark eyes stay locked on hers as he unties and strips her slowly of her smallclothes.

There's time for her to stop him, but he thinks he'll say it even if it gets her annoyed. "We stop when you want," he hushes out calmly.

"That isn't an answer." Her voice is shaky and her breathing hitched, sharp each time he brushes his thumbs over the insides of her thighs.

"I'm going to kiss you," he tells her again, but his voice is shaking, too, 'cause he's looking to her womanhood bare beneath him, her dark hair and the pink he can see of her smelling of something so sweet, so wanting for him as her legs spread just a bit more, that his throat's gone dry, his heart quicker with each second that passes.

"Say something," she whispers, raising her knee so her foot can kick him.

He looks back to her, speechless and awed, and it isn't so terrifying anymore. She leans back onto the pillows feeling powerful and womanly that he's crumbling between her thighs and looking at her like she's precious again. _Beautiful, goddess, fucking good_ , but his throat's failing him while she smirks. He wanted to learn her body before anything else that'd bind them more together, so he will, and her leg jerks once more when he kisses her hipbone.

"Not sure how to do this," he admits, lowering his mouth to her sweetness.

When his tongue slips inside where she's wettest, she arches off the bed with a scream.

\- -- - -- -

Her knee jerks and slams up beneath the table when his hand finds her thigh under the table at a small gathering hours later.

He's just trying to be discreet about passing her the note Jon passed him, because they're all professional here, what with Jon's sigh at him and Arya's red face glowering at the table while Tyrion and two other men stare at her.

Rickon and Shireen haven't even noticed, they're listening to grievances, but Gendry's face is probably redder than hers.

"Sorry," she offers, and just like that, she's forgotten to discussion of Lord Tyrion's departure, Lady Shireen's, and then Jon's.

"Read it," he says quietly, but no one's paying much mind to them anyways. They like the castle smith well enough, and mayhaps they don't much care that their lady does, too.

She wants to scorn him, though, because he shouldn't be touching her thighs even if it's innocent when her body still feels hollow and -- oh, goodness. "Fine," she mumbles, and he smiles at her in a way that'd stop her heart, she swears it.

It's a letter from Sansa, though, written to her, and at first glance of it, she doesn't know why Gendry's smiling. Until she rereads it thrice over before clutching it close to her chest.

 _Winter roses_ , but too soon yet to tell. She just hopes so, since nothing could be much more beautiful than that start of something truly new and happy like everything could be. Sansa may never have had the chance to develop her bond with Lady, but her premonitions were right all the same.

"I hope so," she whispers to no one, a short sigh no one pays attention to in the crowded hall.

"I'm not," Gendry says like an afterthought.

She turns to glare at him, since this was supposed to be happy. "Not what?"

"Not going to King's Landing," he smiles, nodding to the others talking about Winterfell while their Lord's away, and oh, her heart catches again.

"You're staying, then?"

He nods, explains it as something, something, Jon thought something, something, might be better, something, something, but he just doesn't want to leave her unless he has to, she knows. She reaches for his thigh, and he threads his fingers through hers.


	31. Didn't we?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you want to fight?"
> 
> "Fight?" His voice had shaken with his laugh, bright and ridiculous as he shook his head. "No," he guffawed, reaching out to nudge her fingers with his. "Just hold my hand."

"Do you think it's true?"

Gendry sighed loudly. He rolls over. He sees her stare straight up to the skies, and he sighs again.

"Is what true?" He whispered it more harshly than he intended, but he's bloody exhausted. Of walking, of existing like this, of seeing these damned trees everyday, yet he can see her roll her eyes in the pitch dark, her face only just visible 'cause the stars and the tone of her voice he knows so bloody well.

 _Do you think it's true?_ Gods, she called everything and everyone a lie just the same.

"About Robb," but she whispered it like the trees have ears, like she could wake Hot Pie sleeping a tree away when he snores like the dead.

"Who? Your brother?" There's the sting of something in his chest, same as the sting at his eyes burning since he's so tired, but there's the scrape of her coarse tunic over the ground, the change in her breaths when she sat up, and he wasn't so mad she kept him a bit more awake most nights.

Except he'd just remembered that Hot Pie was to be keeping watch for them, and he couldn't very well do that asleep, the fat, lazy boy.

He couldn't do it very well awake neither, so Gendry just pulled himself up so he's sitting on the ground he'd tried _so_ hard to make decent enough for sleeping. The moon was high up in the sky anyway, and a couple hours of rest instead of a night might do him more harm than good. He hadn't heard Arya snore in a few days neither, so maybe he isn't the only one that thought that.

It was either that or she was spending more time like this, staring up to the sky where the comet had been. The King in the North, Lannister red, blood of the innocent, dragons -- no one knew. All people did was talk, but Arya had been less and less. And sitting there, her arms hugging her knees, her hair dirty and pushed behind her ears so her face was clear and white in the moonlight and _staring_ at it, it was like she was the wolf she said her family had. He thought she'd howl, but then he saw her arms were forceful against her belly, holding it. He smelled blood and not dead people, and the twist in his stomach knew she couldn't be mistaken as a boy anymore.

"Do you think he really rides into battle on the back of his direwolf?" she asked.

She was looking at him like he might really hold the answer, as stupid as she called him, but all he knew then was that she for true couldn't be mistaken as a boy at all. She's too pretty. Too eleven years old or so.

"I can't say," he admitted lowly. He'd imagine her brother Jon Snow does, as much as she went on about him. "Do you think so?"

"I think they're large enough for riding," she said certainly. He could barely make out her jaw locking, her posture tensing. "Nymeria would have been."

"She was yours?"

"I think I was more hers," she laughed, or close to it. "It would have been miles around here somewhere I'd seen her last, I think."

That reminded him. "We should be reaching that river, the one a hundred feet wide you say we should have passed. Any day, now." It isn't so hard for him to sound certain, not for her when hope keeps her movin' one foot in front of the other and continuing on.

"Are you just saying that I need a bath?"

"Nope," he'd said. He felt his cheeks stretch to a smile.

"You're a liar," she sighed, but not testily. "They say he can't be killed either."

"Who?" Because maybe he still asked stupid questions that prolong their talks.

"Robb. Do you think that's true?"

He didn't know what to say, though, 'cause she's said anyone can die and he's seen enough to know as much. They'd only _just_ escaped Harrenhal, and he doesn't like the way she did so with that criminal, but they're free, and people died, and anyone can. That isn't what he wants her thinking, though, even if she knows it.

So he's "Not sure," he told her. He doesn't know about kings fighting wars anyways; the smallfolk are fighting different battles. He can't be so bitter when she looks smaller all folded into herself like that. "Robert won the last rebellion, didn't he? You said your brother was named after him."

"My father's closest friend," she whispered.

"Maybe it means something."

"Maybe." She rolled onto her back, shivered onto her side so she's all wrapped up in her arms and his cloak, if he had one. "We'll reach Winterfell, soon, we should."

"I know," he said, like he could have been promising it. They really should have seen that river by now. "You'll see your brother again."

\- -- - -- -

"You're a liar," she's told him. It's only the second time, though, and she's saying something else he can't make sense of.

She's rambling on as he smiths, pounds life into metal that clangs and hisses in the heat that curls her toes in pleasant warmth, but if she's gonna insist on sitting on that anvil like the distraction she is, her skirts hitched up to her knees so the cloth doesn't stick to the sweat shining down her legs, a lick of the cherry filling of those tarts she brought him stuck to her lip, she's gonna have to move.

He needs that anvil soon.

"I'm not a liar," he tells her, shouts at her since steel's in his ears and she nods the way she does when doesn't hear or isn't listening to someone, automatic and that much more fiery when she catches on.

"You're not telling me everything, then."

"How would you know?" he laughs. He sets his hammer down gently so it won't clatter, and then it's just the crisp fire and the exerted pace of his breaths filling the forge. He takes a gulp of the water she offers him, pouring a bit into his hands and wiping at his forehead. "Ask again. More direct."

"I did," she protests.

He grins rugged and bright and beautiful, says that she didn't while he reaches for her mouth to wipe the bit of red crumbs from her lip with his thumb. He licks it clean with his tongue, holds her gaze while he does, but he laughs when she shoves at his chest with both her hands.

"Stop," she huffs, because her face is all red, but his is, too, and he has to lean into her when she kicks her legs the next moment, hooking her ankles around the backs of his legs. "Why do that when you're still scared to kiss me?"

"What?" he laughs, ridiculous. He tugs her just a smidgen closer to the edge of the anvil, his fingers a slip on sweat and skin to curve around the backs of her knees. "I wasn't ever scared. Just had reasons not to, but I haven't had any in a while, y'know." She did know, and it's why his work ethic was less and less concentrated. "'Sides," he adds. His eyes lighten to a teasing blue, and the look she gives him is murderous until her gaze drops to his mouth. "You were the scared one."

Instead of bristling in too much defense, she pinches his side, says it like it's his fault instead of her own tenaciousness. "Where'd you learn that, anyways?" Like it's an accusation though her thighs were pressed against his head when he'd done it, his beard rasping against her thighs, his tongue.. gods. He'd been the best release of her life.

"Heard about it being done," he mumbled, almost sheepish. "Wanted to."

"On anyone else?"

"Arya," he chides. Until she bites at her lip, and he's forgotten most else. "Just you."

He doesn't sound ridiculous, just in love, so she smiles. "No one else, then?"

She's too cheeky, he thinks, as he takes another drink of water. "I have," he tells her. "Kissed a couple girls, but not with my mouth open, and none I liked half so much as you. I _love_ you, and I like you in my bed, yeah?" He leans forward to peck her nose, but instead of swooning, she giggles.

"They must have been unhappy girls." He snorts, and they're such a pair, their crimson faces, their sweaty tunics sticking to their skin. "..But it took you so long to _touch_ me," she starts to protest since it's ridiculous, but he quiets her with a brush of his thumb over her knee.

"Are you complaining?" He grins again, cheekily, feeling her arms around him like an ensnaring grip he knows could keep him busy for hours.

"No," she says, sweet and pink-cheeked. "I like it. And you."

"I told you I wanted to learn your body first," he murmurs, leaning into her touch and shutting his eyes when her nails trace delicately up his sides.

'Cause maybe he just does want to know how to make it good for her when they're ready to bind themselves together, or maybe he's just trying for the _satiation_ she sneered at, something addictive like her skin under his hands where innocence wasn't really keeping them maidens.

"I like touching you," he murmurs, so low it's a caught rumble in his chest, a confession though they're a poorly kept secret. "I wasn't going to touch you until we'd wedded."

"But we -- wait," she tells him, though they aren't doing anything and she's the one that's stopped. "What do you consider married, then? If not in the Godswood? Gods, you don't want to wed in a sept, do you?"

"What's wrong with that?" he asks. Not defensively, but she's too snobbish, she is, and it endears her to him even more. "A sept could be nice."

"The Seven?"

"My father's gods," he says. He doesn't smile. "We could get married in every custom there is, would you like that?"

"I'd just like you," she tells him honestly, because he's dense if he isn't getting it, but he is, and he slides his hands from her knees to the back of her shins. "Tell me why you're really staying?" She'll think the worst if he won't. It might mean danger for Jon.

"Mmm. We have to go say 'bye to Shireen and Lord Tyrion, first. They'll be off soon."

"Gendry, you have --"

"I will," he cuts her off quick, kisses the corner of her mouth. "Promise," but before he backs away, he tugs the hem of her pretty dress down so she isn't all knees and kissable skin. "After, yeah?"

"Will you kiss me after?" She just _had_ to ask. Had to.

\- -- - -- -

"Yeah," he says. "Yes, I mean, yes, m--"

" _Shireen_ ," she tells Gendry for the umpteenth time. She smiles, though, and they really do look alike then. A bit shy but not quite, slightly awkward since family is treated as family even though they're strangers until estranged family reunion ions. Which -- "You'll consider visiting, won't you? Storm's End?"

And he wants to agree, maybe. He didn't expect to ever have much in the way of a family he didn't start himself, so being lucky enough for a cousin as kind as Shireen, Baratheon or not, is better than most. She just looks like nothing else would make her happier, though, and he remembers Rickon gushing about this girl months ago when he'd made the mistake of asking him about her instead of Arya, but she was asleep, and Rickon wouldn't shut up.

"Maybe," he offers, the most he can.

She's a dear in the way she smiles anyways, fond and happy and actually _hugging_ him in the courtyard, though, with her people to see and the Baratheon banners of yellow and black caught in the wind.

There's yellow and black and red, carriages, men, Lord Tyrion telling one last animated story to the Stark children. Jon looks perplexed that whatever he'd asked resulted in this, but Arya's actually on the cold ground laughing, and it's the bias she told him about when they'd learned he was attending Sansa's wedding. He wasn't supposed to stay months after, though, but when she told him how she hated the Lannisters (the dead ones, but who didn't?), she told him how she remembered the Imp telling them stories as children when he'd visited with the King.

Raucous, ridiculous stories that made her mum and the Queen sigh, but even Sansa would gather around the rug and listen, she said. Myrcella and Tommen, too.

And she smiled at that, and maybe not everyone hated all the dead Lannisters after all.

"I will see you," Shireen promises. Maybe now's the time for her to say something pretentious and promising, something like _ours is the fury_ or _Storm's End would like a lord like you_ , but he wasn't a man of many words, and the men escorting her back to her home don't know they might have another liege lord.

He'd rather it that way, where he's just a smith to his lady's hold and men from King's Landing don't ogle Arya. He's tired of glaring.

"I'll see you," he repeats with a slow smile, just in time for a greying man to ask who that man is that was hugging the Lady Shireen.

"I'm going to tell him," she whispers before he can say no, but then Rickon's shoving him aside all red in the face from laughing with Tyrion and wanting to see his girl.

Rickon says hello, Shireen says hello, and they're repeating it again in a conversation he really doesn't want to hear.

So he moves over to where Arya's still choking on her laughter and Jon's taking Tyrion's arm in a brotherly farewell. It sounds like he's saying something lewd about heads, three of them, and now Jon's turning red, too, and he wonders if it was like this when Willas left. Lords and ladies are a bit less composed than he'd thought.

"Gendry," Arya laughs in a gasp. She moves up to her feet by groping at his arm, and the bannerman carrying Lannister colors frowns. "This is happier than last time," she tells him, just in case he wanted to know.

When Sansa left, she cried, though, so her clinging to his sleeve to subtlely tug him away from Tyrion as he congratulates himself for being so instructive and clever was nice.

"Not happy for Rickon," he snickers lightly. But he can, because he's suffered love's absence and heartache himself and sympathizes mostly with the nicks on Rickon's jaw from a poor shaving attempt instead of his few impending months without Shireen.

Maybe he could do something about the shaving.

"I saw him leave her room late the other night, y'know," she tells him.

"..What?" He better hadn't heard her right. She tugs him the rest of the way to the outskirts of the crowd, the people eager to see stags and lions emerge, and it's nicer here, with Jon glancing back for Arya and looking happy, Rickon and Shireen standing palm to palm, Lord Tyrion holding his gaze and bowing kindly.

He suddenly thinks he might miss that lord, and it's a strange thing, being so acquainted with a highborn that isn't proclaimed kin or a Stark.

"It wasn't like that," Arya says about Rickon and Shireen the instant he states that Tyrion is a good man. "He is," she agrees after a short pause, thinking. She pushes up to her toes to see better, but Tyrion isn't up higher than men's soldiers. She stares back at Gendry.

And he knows well enough by now that the look she's giving him from the corner of his eye is a curious one. Like she's torn between a frown and a smile, so he grins down at her, wraps his hand around hers, and looks to where Rick's waving down to Shireen. "It isn't as much ceremony as I thought."

"No one cares about them," she snorts, shifting her weight to her left side of weightless so she's leaning onto him. "Just wait 'till Jon leaves. The North might fall to a depression."

"It'd be even more sad if I was going, too, right?"

"Look at him," she giggles quick, hard enough for head to toss back and her younger brother to glare back at her in annoyance.

"He'll never love again," he whispers somberly, and it makes her outright _cackle_ and causes people to look. "Arya, hush."

"They'll both be back in Winterfell soon, anyways. People are too used to them being here."

"Is that bad?" he wonders. The way she says some things, the way she smirks, doesn't make him sure.

"The people haven't had to get used to Jon leaving and returning constantly," she shrugs. Her breath's a frozen cloud as she sighs, turns into his side when the crick and crack of the carriages, stir of the horses, and shouts of departure toss palpable excitement over Winterfell. The black and yellow banners are brilliant against the grey North until they're going and going and gone, and Shaggydog starts to whine.

"He isn't the Hand of the Queen," she says when the keep settles and what little ceremony there was is over. "He'll be away next, though," just a couple days from now Jon would, she grumbles, curling her fingers through her hair and brushing imperfections from her pretty blue dress.

It's why she's trying harder to dress like a proper lady, a bit more acquainted to managing Winterfell since she'd be the eldest Stark remaining.

Not Rickon because he's male, but Gendry doesn't think to question that. He doesn't think too much on Jon refusing to be Queen's Hand _and_ King.

"Why're you making that face?" she asks him, frowning up annoyingly at his stern expression. She smiles bright just as suddenly as she scoffs, in her own humor as she guides him down the path towards the forge.

"No reason," he says. He's thinking of what Shireen said to him, though, of stags and letters and a place of his in Storm's End if he'd want it, but also something about a kraken and something else about Rickon. He isn't sure, but he can hear Arya talking and he isn't _really_ listening.

At least, not until she smacks his arm more harshly than she likely intended.

"Where've you been?" she asks him, sounding half-annoyed, half-amused, stopping them just outside the entry to the smith. "What are you thinking about that's making you frown like that?"

It isn't much at all. Just the swell of pride he felt seein' those Baratheon colors fly, a stag backdropped by yellow, inky black vibrant against the grey sky. It stirred something in his chest, he thinks, something like ambition, but then she's smiling up at him like he's some stupid fool she loves, and he isn't thinking anything else.

\- -- - -- -

"I don't love you," he whispers into her ear, her hair rasping against his cheek, her laugh a squirm wrenched from her stomach, twisting in his arms on their floor in front of the fire.

"I miss Shireen," Rickon had said an hour ago. He barely picked at his food, and since it was the best mutton Gendry had ever had, it was a sure waste.

Jon snorted into his wine. "She'll return soon, Rickon," he started, a grin threatening the exasperated twitch of his beard. "You've lost her company, not your appetite. Eat while it's hot."

"They like me in the kitchens," he sighed.

"You scare them in the kitchens," Arya muttered, rolling her eyes.

"They'll still feed me."

"Not if I order them not to," Jon said, but he isn't that cruel. He's as lazy as Ghost somedays, but Gendry thinks he has a right to be.

"I'll just scare them, 'en," Rickon sulked.

"Can we talk about Sansa?" Arya piped up. She was swinging her legs back and forth beneath the table, chewing a bite of a honey-buttered roll with her mouth open, and she kicked him.

"Ouch," he muttered, but neither Rickon nor Jon listened to him.

"What about Sansa?"

"Winter roses," she said with a scoff, because she's had a day and a night to think on it, and maybe her sister's just unnecessarily dramatic and pretentious. "Does she really think she might be carrying?"

"That's great."

" _Shh_ , Rickon. You don't think she is?" Jon asked, almost seeming wary like he was steeling himself before both his sisters would fight petty insults to the pain."

"Winter roses," she repeated. But she turned her accusatory stare to Gendry like it's all his fault, no one being as clever as she is, and Rickon rolled his eyes while Jon stared at him accusatorially, too. "Maybe she just wants to attend a tourney. Be crowned the Queen."

"Why would she write that to you in a letter?"

She'd only paused for just a second. "Because she's stupid." And then she was back to eating, smirking at him from across the table.

"You can't call her stupid, Arya," he told her. Jon almost looked impressed. "She's your sister," he explained patiently, cheerfully. "And you love her."

"I do," she sighed like she relented, propping her elbow up on the table.

"I miss Shireen," Rickon said again, and so their small supper continued.

"I'll speak to you in the morning," Jon had told him, just made it seem more like a question instead of his grey eyes committing his soul to servitude.

"You will," Gendry said, because in a couple days, Jon would be gone, and that'd be everything they'd talked about set for true. "You'll be safe?"

"And you'll keep her safe," though there wasn't a question about it. On all his small honor as a baseborn, nothing would happen to Arya, but it was nothing she'd see warred away without him there as it was. "Rickon, too."

"Will be fine," he'd said. They'd been for months upon months. Maybe this was why going-aways weren't so splendid. Everything that mattered was discussed with other Starks down the corridor knocking over a candlestick.

"Will they?" Jon asked, the short laugh he does when he's fond and exasperated.

He just couldn't answer that, not really, 'cause Arya's mean and punches people and Rickon likes to read large books with big words and use them in dark hallways.

"Are you ready?" she called, skirting down the hallway.

Jon bowed to him, bid his leave. It didn't feel as resounding as the banners had.

"Strange," he thought he mumbled, and it was just his luck that she assumed he was talking about her.

"That's rude." Her frown was a pout, but even as aggravated she'd quickly looked, she was adorable. "I just wanted to g'ome." _Go home_ , she flustered over the words, tugging at the brown fur lining her blue sleeves.

"I do," he'd said, sweet and endeared, but she wasn't having any of it.

"You'd rather stay here? Do you want to fight?"

"Fight?" His voice had shaken with his laugh, bright and ridiculous as he shook his head. "No," he guffawed, reaching out to nudge her fingers with his. "Just hold my hand."

And she did, and it was routine back to the forge.

"Sansa says she's excited to plan the wedding."

"Whose?" he asked, suddenly more intrigued than moments ago.

"She didn't say," she huffed, which was strange since Sansa didn't know she wanted to marry Gendry.

Well, that's a lie.

"She didn't say _my_ wedding. Or ours."

"Probably doesn't mean anything." He set another log to the fire, let it breathe, let it grow so the flames were orange, bright against her face. Even still, he near tripped over her since he didn't see her sitting on the rug in the middle of the room, half between him and the bed, but with a smile, he'd pulled himself behind her.

"It'd be awful if she did plan it," she murmured. She nestled backwards so she was safely against his chest, his legs on either side of her.

"She seems good at that sorta thing. Might make her happy."

"It wouldn't make _me_ happy," she insisted, just a subtle flicker of petulance in her tone. Sansa was the wife that was more likely to not know what her husband was planning and plotting; it wasn't supposed to be her. Even if Gendry was warm and the fire smelled nice and his arms were slowly wrapping around her stomach, curling around her when his mouth dropped to her shoulder. "Tell me then, the truth of it. Why you're staying here."

He didn't _sigh_ , not really, but she could just have been happy he was staying and that'd be it. "'Cause I talked to Jon," he murmured into her neck. She smelled like some perfume to match her pretty dress. "You smell good."

"And you're a liar," she had murmured. "Tell me the rest of your lies before the truth if that'd make it easier." She shifted just a bit so she could see his face, flashes of color from the fire, but all it did was make them a mess of legs he doesn't want freed from.

"You want to hear lies?"

"Mmhmmm. You're getting better at them."

" _Arya_ ," he started, affronted. "You're ridiculous," he said, a pain in his arse most days. "A lie, then?"

"Yes," she demanded in that way she did, ready and waiting.

So. "I don't love you," he whispers into her ear, her hair rasping against his cheek, her laugh a squirm wrenched from her stomach, twisting in his arms on their floor in front of the fire.

"Liar," she laughs, because that very much isn't true. Another knot of their her legs, her knees too pointy as she moves, and they're facing one another. "Are you really just staying for me?" She has to ask. Seriously, now. "Or did Jon say something?"

"He didn't have to," he says, sighs just a little. He closes his eyes but opens them when her palm presses to his cheek. "Maybe there isn't a reason to fret, but if the Queen doesn't know my face, there's no one to send to Dragonstone instead of Storm's End like King Stannis's insult, and she can't _really_ make me do anything else, can she?" Or send someone to kill him, that, too. He's thinking Edric was only pardoned because his mother was a lady.

"The Queen can't _make_ you do anything," she scoffs. But that is a lie. "Why's Jon going, then, if you don't want her involved?"

"Isn't just about me," he smiles. He curls her hair behind her ear, and her eyes on him are like melting silver. "He's.. other things to discuss with the Queen. About him, then he's to mention climatic changes and whatnot. Shireen wanted him to," he nods, grinning when she snorts. "He won't be gone for near as long as it takes to get there, Arya. Don't worry."

"I'm not," she soothes. And she isn't. She lifts her arms to wrap around his neck, and shes pressing them closer, and nought else matters for true. "I'm happy you're staying."

"With you," he whispers. He isn't foolish enough to leave again. "We'll never be parted, right?" That's what matters most, and whether the Queen refuses to legitimize him or not, it won't matte. Being nameless and faceless isn't so bad if it keeps queens and other highborns away.

But she kisses his neck, just then, with tongue and teeth and her lips, and he isn't wondering anything at all anymore. His breath's caught where she's biting, and oh, gods.

Oh, gods.

Oh, gods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm in the midst of an awful cold, so sorry if it showed! Next, there'll be a Queen which means interesting progression! And there will also be some more heat and..
> 
> How many readers would I lose if I wrote in something like "as hard as iron" or "as hard as Casterly Rock" because I know I have some brilliant phrases ready to make intimate scenes less serious.
> 
> Thank you, lovelies, and stick around! xoxo!


	32. So Please Don't Let On

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don't sound concerned, Arya. He's just a boy," he sighs, stopping at the window.
> 
> But no, she thinks. Rickon was just a boy when he was with Osha and the Skagosi. He was just a child when he'd been forced to become a man, just like Robb had been just a child when he'd died, like Jon had been a child fighting the world's war for them, like Sansa when her dreams weren't true and Bran became like a god and Gendry was when he was wanted dead and she was when she'd first killed a boy that'd been a child, too.
> 
> "He's nearly fourteen, Jon."

In his dream, she's laid beneath him.

She's hollow where her skin wanes gibbous moons curving into her hipbones, melting with each breath shuddering into his arms when they're melded together. And together, and her teeth are sharp like a wolf's when she gasps, the beautiful stretch of her neck breathless as her hair splayed over his smoke-scented pillow.

She smells like sweat and sugar and _girl_ , he thinks, with his mouth seared hot to her shoulder. His forge is hot, but there's an oak tree where the firekeep is, the open night sky pouring in stars and twinkling lights, and they're kindling together, and it's so hot, and her skin is glowing red like heated metal. She's beautiful, fiery, and molten, her eyes and her flesh like steel, and he wants to please her so she sings like it, too.

Her hands trace the ridges of his shoulderblades, his spine like cobble under her spread fingers soaking in his skin and kissing the rush of affection hidden in his sternum. He feels her eyelashes on his cheek, her ankles pulling at his back, and they're a friction as delicious as the white on his fingers, the taste of her as sweet as her breaths into the shell of his ear.

She kisses him once, chaste, a slip of their mouths like it's an accident as they pull and press and pour themselves into each other. She kisses him again, whispers that he's her love in breaths as soft and delicate as the white starlight blinding him in its sheens through her hair like sunshine through lace.

It makes him wake up in sweat, hard and gasping like he was when he'd pressed between her thighs in a dream, and he shudders silently, strains so much in want that he's half undone. He has himself in his hand before he thinks about it, his imagination turning his rough, callused fingers smooth and soft until he's feeling it hotter and wetter and _her_.

His head lolls back with a groan, a broken exhale and a whisper of her name so he won't wake her though he wants to, but he sees her side of his bed empty, her pillow abandoned, and the second he wonders why, he closes his eyes, because she can be right _here_ , here in the flutter of his chest with her fingerprints written all over his heart.

His hand moves quicker than his thoughts, his hips jerk, and he says it outloud, a rush from his lungs, his cum thick-wet on his fingers.

" _Arya_."

\- -- - -- -

"This is silly," she says. She laughs it, though, because it's half-three in the morning in her bed in her chambers, and she's feeling an insane that isn't a dream about facelessness, and Sarra chortles manically next to her.

They're like Sansa and Jeyne used to be, and they're ridiculous, two daughters of winter warm and simpering like the Southron.

"I'm telling the truth. You can ask the miller."

"What makes you think I care about the miller?"

Her mouth keeps twitching with the words _I miss Gendry_ every few seconds, something honest pulling at her heart so much it starts to hurt, something so stubborn to stifle it since her squire would laugh at how pathetic and weak she is for the kindling of her iron will melting away to nothing. She is a Stark. More importantly, a woman.

So they gossip instead, and it'd only been a few hours; she'd decided to sleep proper-like in her rooms because Jon would likely come looking in the morning before he was set to leave. She thought being in her chambers might spare a chastisement of the behaviors and standards she might want to watch since others might be, but something, something, Jon talks too bloody much when he gets to feeling like father and mother and brother and sometimes sister to her.

"Well, you know what they're saying about you," Sarra tells her. She says it so unassuming, though, it's so ridiculous and such a lie that it has to be truth, but it's past midnight and it's suddenly so hysteric, it's like Arya hasn't laughed in years.

"I don't _care_ what others say. I never have."

"You do so long that they don't say you've gone weak," she whispers like it's a secret. Or a lie, because she knew as well as Sansa did there was an eight year old girl with red-rimmed grey eyes crying somewhere in the past because she was just called horseface and underfoot. So changing the topic, Sarra nestles deeper into the soft blankets, the feather down mattress. "Why do you ever leave this bed?"

"You've already asked, Sarra." She frowns partially annoyed, but there's just a single candle burning for light instead of a crackling fire, and she near says it again. She misses Gendry.

"You didn't answer when I asked. Or when I asked about _him_."

"We aren't going to giggle about men," she says, strong to enforce it, but a smile's on her tongue and she's seconds from telling all. "I'm not Sansa."

"Some say you're just as frozen."

"Frozen?" Her sweet, silly, warm sister? Ice was driven through her veins, yes, but never through her heart.

"Your brother's men weren't too pleased she never spoke to them." She clicks her tongue, but Arya just snorts.

"Can you blame her? Most of them are idiots! And you knew Sansa and what life had done to her. Would you want to talk to men?"

"I'd rather men talk to me," she sighs, huffing, her blonde hair looking orange on the pillow.

And Arya wants to sympathize, she does, but she's feeling like women don't need men when they're biased and happy and her. "Maybe the miller has a brother," she quips after a pause.

"Perhaps," Sarra chortles. She laughs so hard that she's silent, and Arya's ribs feel like they're cracking under the ease of all this laughter. "It's terribly wonderful, isn't it?"

"How much of an authority you are on who's keeping the company of who?"

"You're the most intriguing," she whispers, her voice lower in conspiracy so Arya has to lean in to hear, a shadow of yellow and brown a mess beneath their heads. "They do say you've stolen the smith."

"He wasn't free to be taken," she starts, incredulous, because he's a person, not property. It's his necklace around her neck and the memory of his fingertips on her thighs, and she suddenly -- she's sorry for how she treated Sansa when she'd drone on and on about Willas.

She wants to say it again, _I miss Gendry_ since she's more wholesome when he's next to her and she isn't consciously thinking about the use of her weapons _just in case_ , but it's rubbish she ever sighed and rolled her eyes and scorned her sister for each sentence pertaining to Willas. She understands it now, and she's a simpering fool.

Seven hells.

She's turned into Sansa.

"I've become Sansa," she gasps, but not really, because she isn't an idiot. "Who says it?"

"Most everyone. They don't see how you caught him. Well, not the men, 'cause they can see how, actually."

"What?"

"Your teats," Sarra emphasizes with a minx of a grin. She'd never been lacking in her own curves, and it makes Arya laugh again, such a stupid thought.

"Who wanted him, then?" she wants to know, perhaps just a smidgen more demanding than kind with the way jealousy starts to tinge the light-dark of her room green.

"Beth did."

"Beth?"

"Beth Cassel? Arya, you haven't forgotten her."

"No," she mumbles, turning her cheek into her pillow so she can yawn. "But isn't she marrying one of the Greatjon's sons?"

"Weren't _you_ marrying one of the Greatjon's sons?" She smirks, but it's gentle, and just like that -- the hysterics of a late night are serious again.

"I wasn't," but it's just a reminder of something like duty and honor, how there had never been a funeral, how set and simple things could have been if Gendry hadn't gone and been stupid. She wriggles so she's laying on her back, relaxing when a reassuring touch is gently set to her shoulder.

"There's Mala, too."

"Who the fuck's Mala?"

"Innkeep's daughter. Her hair's golden like mine but not as shiny," she informs her. Snidely. "Comely enough, I suppose." She looks like she's contemplating it, but her thoughtful face loses all its worth when she wheezes in her laughs. "All she talks about is the thing his jaw does."

It takes her a second, but then she can see the broad slope of his shoulders and the lock of his jaw all handsome beard and ruggedness. "When he's annoyed?" she sniggers. She likes knowing this Mala has that affect on him.

"I guess," her squire says, yawning so wide that she giggles. "But he's handsome. And wealthy with his trade, isn't he?"

"Yes," Arya answers after a breath, her mouth twitching in an automatic smile. Of course Gendry was making a decent living. He just wouldn't be eating enough if she wouldn't bring him lunch the days she could. His wages, she called the food, and he never needed to know the truth of it. She'd spent enough nights with a spare pair of spectacles that testified to Willas Tyrell and the sheets of number keeping. There was enough, but there wasn't, but the North was _definitely_ starting to thrive.

"He should have a family by now," Sarra yawns, like she's reading implications and her thoughts.

"Lots of men don't take a wife until they've greyed."

"He's respectable," Sarra tsks, like she's admonishing and proud _someone's_ made an honest woman out of her lady, and it's about damned time even if they don't know it yet. "And he seems to be quite the prayerful man."

Arya wants to laugh at the thought of devout Gendry until Sarra says she means all the time he spends in the Godswood, and oh, they're going to hell. "He's religious, yes. Quite."

"As are you."

"And you?"

"What about me, milady?" She giggles when Arya glowers at her and is nearly pushed off the bed.

"What do you think about him?" Because she's just curious. That's all. Her cheeks ache from how much she's laughed, and it's almost nice how strange and normal this is or _should_ be.

"Your smith?" Sarra grins, wide and airless in her head. Like Jeyne would.

"Not mine," she protests futilely. Her squire grins bright, and Arya's cheeks are aching again. "My smith," she says, more whisper than anything. She half-flails, grinning and silly and unlike herself in the middle of the night on her pillows as she twists into the blankets.

Sarra rolls onto her stomach, and _terribly wonderful_ , she repeats from earlier, a quiet sigh and a soft smile drifting to peaceful snores.

It feels like seconds instead of the passed hours before Arya's woken, her eyes an open flash before she winces. There's light pouring in the double windows, and the accursed sun on this dreadful morning is awful. "No," she mumbles, groggy since the warm, soft bed is making her lazy.

A hand stops messing through her hair when the bed dips at her side, and the familiarity stops her from wanting a knife. "Good morning, little sister."

He sounds like he's smiling, so she braves up enough to open her eyes. "Are you leaving?"

Before he can be offended she didn't greet him properly, Sarra pipes up a "He isn't!" quickly, standing over by the wardrobe. That's why she's the squire. "Do you feel up to wearing pink today?"

"No," Jon answers for her, but she clicks her tongue.

"It'll be pretty."

"Her corpse will be pretty," Arya mutters.

That actually makes Jon laugh. "I was set to leave, but when I stopped by Rickon's room, I found a letter."

"From Shireen?" She's about to ask if it was erotic, but she remembers Jon doesn't quite know what a girl is.

"From Rickon."

"What? Why?"

"Here," he simply says, shoving the parchment into her hands.

"He spelled castellan wrong." She isn't surprised, really. Jon pulls himself up and starts pacing, and her cursory glance of the contents is uneventful until -- "I'm going to the Stormlands," she reads, gaping. "Did he go?"

"He says he'll be there by morning."

"He -- what?" Jon stares at her exhaustedly, and all she can do is snicker. "He can't. Did he truly leave?"

"You don't sound concerned, Arya. He's just a boy," he sighs, stopping at the window.

But no, she thinks. Rickon was just a boy when he was with Osha and the Skagosi. He was just a child when he'd been forced to become a man, just like Robb had been just a child when he'd died, like Jon had been a child fighting the world's war for them, like Sansa when her dreams weren't true and Bran became like a god and Gendry was when he was wanted dead and she was when she'd first killed a boy that'd been a child, too.

"He's nearly fourteen, Jon."

"And?" He turns to look at her with his arms folded across his chest, shadows over his face looking more quizzical than tried.

"Well," she frowns, trying to think delicately. "Robb was that old when he was s'posed to marry that Frey bitch."

"And he married a lowborn girl instead," Jon says.

Giving him a queer look, she can't say why. But then Sarra sets a gown on her bed, a decent seeming simple one that's brown with threads of green in the bodice. "But Rickon hasn't --" because her squire's giving her a _look_ "-- been with the miller's girl, has he?"

"What?"

"Nothing," she says defensively, reaching up for her mess of bedheaded hair. "It's silly and doesn't matter. We were talking about Rickon."

"I went by the forge to ask Gendry if he'd seen him; I hadn't at breakfast."

"And?" She misses Gendry so much, it's straining her voice, and she's so weak.

"Rickon was there," Jon grumbles. She'd think his heart was giving out as big a fuss he was making.

"Why aren't you happier, then?" she laughs. "He's run off before."

"He was practicing with a sword. He grinned when he saw me and said that I didn't look mad."

"Well, you don't have a fiercely angry face. Knowing you, your face was all red with tears and your worry," she smirks wryly, a gentle tease in her tone making him sigh. She outright _laughs_ when her squire snorts, though, and Jon exhales loudly at the both of them, shoves his hands through his hair with symptoms of stress.

"Ridiculous."

"Begging your pardon, milord."

"Get over it, Jon." The two women shrug at each other. "What'd Rickon say? Tell me," Arya quickly remedies, fighting so her tone's more gentle, her words soft like Sansa's spirit.

"He said he wanted to see what our reactions would be first."

"That means he wants permission?" Now she sees why he's more or less happy; it's suspicious. Unless.. "Do you think he wants to be more responsible? More like a lord?" It's laughable, but the things people do for love.

"He might," he exhausts. "I think I'm going to arrange him a stay in Storm's End."

"You're sure?" Because he'd paused before he said it. Eleven seconds.

"You'd be alone in Winterfell until I returned then," he tells her warily. "Are you comfortable with that?"

"What, with the Maester and the Greatjon should anything go wrong? I've Needle and herbs," she pfft's, gesturing for him to turn around so she can start moving up and about.

"And the castellan and our bannermen and everyone in the keep ensuring you keep your well-being and don't take a torch to Winterfell."

If he wouldn't take a dragon to their castle. "It won't be long, right?" There's a touch more plea in her voice than she'd like, and when Jon sighs again, it's gentle.

"You know it's about a month on the road, Arya. I have to stay _at least_ a week in court for courtesies, and then it's a month to return."

"But what if you get caught in something?" she huffs. Her bare feet warm on the stone floor instead of frozen, she makes for the water basin Sarra filled and starts wetting her face, washing away the emotion starting to burn at her eyes. "Next thing you know, you're staying until some celebration or another."

"Whose?" Jon asks tiredly, but he's smiling as he plays along.

"Aegon's."

" _Prince_ Aegon, Arya. Why?"

"Because he'll convince the Queen to marry him, as he should, so it leaves you out of it."

"She won't marry him. It'd be nothing to gain politically," he states like he's said it before.

"Then she can marry the Imp, and he'll insist you stay for three months of festivities."

"Will he?"

"He will," she informs him, her tone forceful and her eyes grinning. If she possessed a slow-developing talent for divination and green-sight, now was the time. "He'll invite you to many brothels, but you'll have an urgent letter requiring your return to Winterfell, so you won't stay more than three days."

"Twelve," he promises, turning to face her. "I've planned for twelve days, not any longer."

\- -- - -- -

_"I've found a bastard son of Robert Baratheon," he tells the Queen. He's never been one for faking too many pleasantries, but out here in the enclosed gardens without any pretenses and Dany lounging on cushions, he's on with why he's here. It's forty-nine days._

_And instantly, the shade of her coy smile hardened to a dark, impassive frown. "A son of the Usurper, you mean. Another. I have heard this, Jon. From Lord Lannister and Lord Tyrell."_

_"Another, yes," he tells her gently. You'll remember you legitimized one and gave him a castle to command."_

_"I don't need you to remind me what I've done, nephew. I'll remind you that Lord Edric Baratheon fought for me. He swore his service to me. He earned his name and served under the banners of the late Lord Stannis. What's this boy to do?"_

_"Man," he mutters, because Gendry towered high over him. And had lifted a wagon by himself when the mason had gotten its wheels stuck in the mud._

_When she gives him a look, he quirks a brow at her, and she smiles more amusement than diplomacy. It isn't so bad here, he will start to think, here with sweet, perfumed spring fragrance instead of ice and smoke and ash._

_"Well," he continues, the instant she starts to speak. "Maybe this --"_

_"What do you know of him?"_

_"He likes the color grey," he quips, pouting in exasperation. "You likely know more of him than I do at this point."_

_Her coy, charming smile returned, and this suddenly reminded him of when she propositioned their marriage. Men had fallen for that look, he knew, simpering like the pink-purple of her lips. "Not much, if you can believe it. I do value your thoughts, though," she says. She'll seem softer somehow, less guarded than when she'd first received him into the corridor of King's Landing that shone with the colors of all the Houses' banners in the nation. "Tell me what you know of him, truly."_

_"He's a good man, I know it." When he wasn't telling him in jest that his sister was with child, anyways._

_"Then why are you frowning?"_

_"All the best boys are bastards," he repeats. His frown contorts slowly to a smile, because he's thinking of Arya when she said it, the look in her eyes that made the decision long before anyone else._

_"They can be," Dany hums, soft as the breeze let in through the screens. "Does he pose a potential threat to my reign, then? Good men have an apt to make great kings, or so Tyrion tells me."_

_Gods bless her, she doesn't even look concerned._

_"He's of a mind to war for your Throne."_

_When the Queen pauses, her pretty frown mischievously torn in something comical and confused, he thinks his lie sounds better than it feels. "I don't think he'd succeed," she decides after another beat. Nonchalance and composure and an air of regality dim her frown. "My dragons did win the last war."_

_"You doubt gold dragons could win another one?"_

_"Could?" And she's coy again. "I thought you Starks were too honorable to tell lies."_

_"Targaryen."_

_"When it suits you," she chides him. She smiles radiant, and he has to remind himself why he'd refused her._

_"Water and blood, isn't it?" he humors her. He isn't sure when she'd taken a seat next to him._

_"Fire, I believe," she grins._

_"And winter."_

_"And winter." It's a demure acquiescence; her smile cants to a daring smirk as he turns to face her. "Tell me more of this could be, Jon."_

_"Lord Tyrell has proposed his offer of an arrangement to you, hasn't he?"_

_"His sister wed to the bastard traitor of the once King?" Her perfect eyebrows laugh when she scoffs._

_"Traitor? Not yet," he admonishes, just the quirks of court. "But Lady Margaery has always wanted to be Queen."_

_"Queen to a man with no claim to the Iron Throne," she says impassively. "What's to come of that?"_

_"He had a claim same as you, Dany."_

_She reaches up absently to push his dark curls from his forehead, and he has to look away. "So if the people decide they'd rather a King of the Baratheon line instead of me," she starts._

_"If he'd wed Margaery, the Tyrells would support him. That's the Reach and the Vale rallying against you."_

_"The Vale?" Her laugh sparkles, amethyst eyes and pearly wine. "They haven't declared for a war in years."_

_"They'd fight for Sansa."_

_"Young Lord Arryn wanted to marry Sansa, as you'll know. Lovers spurned aren't quick to raise banners. Try again, Jon," she tells him, straightening her sheened silver gown._

_"Dorne might support any new opposition."_

_"Might? Are you trying to threaten me, blood of my blood?" She laughs again, light, teasing, and he smiles at her._

_"I'm not. Just looking out for your interests, is all. Where's Aegon?"_

_"Out riding. What interests of mine do you think you have to look after?"_

_"Will you legitimize him?" he'll want to know._

_She looks away ponderously, looking as stressed as when he'd first seen her. "I don't know his name."_

_"It isn't important," he says, trying to think like Willas. He feels like a twat. "It could be."_

_"Oh, Jon." She sighs fondly, and it might be laced with wistfulness. Mayhaps that's just him when she stands up delicately with an outstretched hand. "Won't you tell me what you're thinking?"_

_"He shouldn't wed Margaery," he conveys, a shadow over his face as he stands._

_She gives his hand a gentle squeeze before releasing it. "Who, then?" And she's back to coy and omniscient. "You?"_

_"I can't marry him," he says. It makes her eyes twinkle. "A shame, since he's nothing to gain from marrying a Stark."_

_"Targaryen," she reminds him, because he said it, but her voice will lilt in whatever game they're playing._

_"A Stark," he states again, bowing in a way too practiced against the door he held open for her._

_"Has anyone made your sister an offer?" It isn't deceptive, but she hadn't called Arya his cousin._

_"Nearly every man I've seen in court."_

_"And who has made you an offer?" she wonders wryly, dulcet and breathless._

_"Nearly every woman I've seen in court." He tries not to grimace, but she's a silhouette behind the screens as she walks, her chiming laugh a toll off his nerves._

_"Nearly," she beckons. He follows._

\- -- - -- -

"So you're running away to the Stormlands, then?" she asks Rickon, a smile in her voice and a plate in her hands. She angles it away from him when he reaches for it, and she rolls her eyes at his offended look. "It isn't for you, stop."

"It should be," he frowns. But then he grins, and here in the practice yard, his grin and that look in his eyes is more fierce than the sword in his hand.

"It isn't," she persists. "You can go to the dining hall or the kitchens or anywhere -- stop looking at that man like that."

"He was leering at you."

"He was not." But it's an easy enough dismissal when she doesn't bloody care. Men. "That man's stance is wrong," she notes. Rickon turns to look, too. "And why's Forlan fighting with a spear?"

"Gendry gave it to him and said his build was good for it. He was like the Reeds, wasn't he? Forlan?"

"Rickon," she sighs lightly. She tries to wipe the dirt from his face, but he shakes away from her with a _Quit it!_ and a laugh joined by the group in the yard.

"Women," one sneers, but when they'd last sparred, she'd broken his pompous nose.

"How's Forlan doing with the spear?" she asks, because priorities. Steel is clashing around them, shields are being tested with crushing blows, and these men sound like they're having too much fun. "Where's the Greatjon?"

"Counseling Jon." His mouth curls to a pout like their brother. "Can you tell Gendry the balance on this is off, see how long it takes him to figure nothing's wrong with it?"

"..What? No, he'll run you through with that blade," she scowls. She can't help but glance up, follows the path a bit of a ways up to the smithy with her eyes. "Tell me about Shireen quickly."

"That spear nearly took out Gendry's eye."

" _Shireen_ ," she reminds him.

She really shouldn't have. He's staring up to the grey skies reverently, the sun yellow in his eyes, and his smile is stupid and enchanted, a testament to the brilliant Baratheon loves.

She misses Gendry even more now. Seven hells.

It must show on her face, because Rickon pauses his rattling to smack her leg with the flat of his sword. "This is about me!"

"Fine!" Biting at her lip, she rubs her leg where he hit her. She'd feel it in the morning. "I'm listening," she lies. She can't help but glance up and right to dark smoke in the clouds, though, and he whacks her again.

"Oi!" someone shouts, the Greatjon. "She'll knock you in the dirt again if you keep at it." He smiles, aging and weathered, but he's still as quick as he was in his prime.

Master at Arms or not, the quick flash of his frown would just rather not there be a need for Rickon to have to use a weapon. He may have lost his father, but he's still a son to many and a brother -- nevermind the Wildling ways.

"I'm the best brother she's got," and instead of hitting her again, he nudges her with his elbow, a pipe of a laugh when Umber turns to correct a man's stance. Just never the only brother, so her laugh with him softens until it's nothing, when it's suddenly serious.

"This isn't a goodbye, is it?" she asks him. She doesn't sound hesitant, just.. _maybe this is how mum felt_. She isn't sure she likes this feeling. There are knots in her stomach, and here it feels colder somehow.

The sun's still bright in his eyes. "Nearly. When Jon lectured me on not runnin' off, I didn't mention you and the smith."

" _Gendry_ ," she insists. His wolf teeth grin down at her. "You can say his name."

"You can't without flushing."

She mutters a thanks since she hadn't, since Jon knew anyways but didn't concern himself with it so much, and he elbows her again, shoves her away from the practice yard. "Tell Shireen that I'll skin you if you hurt her," she calls over her shoulder, lifting her brown dress with one hand, knowing full well it'd never come to the worst in that, at least.

There's a smidgen of consolation in that, she feels, and she's half in the middle of the start of that proclamation when she walks through the open doors of the smithy. She's lost the end of it, though, when she sees two girls sitting on the bench against the wall and Gendry's half-smile at something the golden-haired twit said.

"Food," Arya says dumbly, standing with a plate of beef and some vegetable she doesn't like that Gendry loves and a suddenly vivid memory of how she felt at the Peach.

The blonde talking doesn't even look up, but it's Sarra next to her she can see, and she nods instead of opting for a curtsy. She looks just as annoyed as Gendry _should_ be, she thinks, but when her squire mouths that the twit's Mala, it's stupid that she felt threatened. Irrelevant.

 _Stupid, stupid, stupid_.

"M'lady," he says, and that smile was nothing compared to his grin now.

\- -- - -- -

_"Who's Arianne Martell?" He asks before he can help it._

_Arya looks up from whatever she's working on, something he only knows about because she talks to herself sometimes like she would in her sleep, and she's just sitting there in one of his sleep-shirts, covered down to her knees, her neck thoroughly bitten and her lips thoroughly kissed. It's been fifty-two days, and she doesn't look much like the poised Lady of Winterfell she was trying to be. "Why?" she grins, her eyes something mischievous and daring, the slope of her shoulders unraveling the tie that keeps her breasts safely hidden._

_He stares, swallows, glances away, and she laughs at him. "Was wondering," he tells her as nonchalant as he can. If his face is starting to redden, it's just because they'd just buried themselves in each other. "Was readin'." Jon's letter._

_"I think she's trying to get herself wed to Aegon," she shrugs, shuffling her hair away from her eyes. "Maybe she'll be married to Ned instead."_

_"Dayne?" He doesn't scowl like he usually does when the name's brought up, so yes, he'll think. That'd work well._

_"Baratheon," she frowns. But them she laughs, her pink tongue skimming over her chapped lips. "She actually quite liked the Stormlands, y'know. But she'll rule Dorne."_

_"Oh," he exhales, visibly relieved, and thank the gods. It didn't matter then. He reaches out to the wall where some intricate etching is steeled into a candlestick mounted to the wall, but it breaks ._

\- -- - -- -

"Why were they here?" she wants to know.

"Who?" He takes the sword he's pulled from the fire, hears it hiss at the sting of cool water. With a look over at her since she's gone quiet, though, it comes back to him, and he tries to suppress his smile at how adorable she is. "You know you're not the only one that comes in here, Arya. Lots of people do."

"Lots of stupid girls?" She rolls her eyes with a touch of bitterness, but oh, they've been here before, the way she drives him to distraction he doesn't try to snuff out like fire, the way her breath catches when his eyes flicker down to her lips.

"You jealous of them?"

"No," she says, too quick in a lie before she recognizes it as truth. He calls her stupid anyways, gives her that look that has her feeling like she's maybe laying next to him without anything beneath her stolen tunic. "Why was Sarra here?"

"Don't know," he shrugs. He gives a sword a practice swing, slashing through the air with more grace than she's used to. "Think the other one dragged her in."

"Sideface," she murmurs.

"What?" But then he must remember since he's scowling at her even as he turns, and all it does is give her a better view of his arms, the bite marks on his neck. "I'm not even practicing," he mutters.

"Have you been?"

"Aye." He grins quick, pleased she isn't asking why not with her. Though it -- no, it still mattered. He thinks of how warm she was in his dream, her skin red, her kiss hot. He has the promise of silver from the blades that twit brought from the Inn whose patrons wanted mended, and he's nearly finished anyways, so stopping now wouldn't be idle. His hands are idle, not holding her.

"Are you finished?" She's perked up since she sees him setting things away for the night, but then it's silly that she's just noticed. "You shaved."

He did, with Rickon so the poor lad would stop cutting himself with a blade, but men keep their own secrets, too, so all he does is walk into her hands since she's standing there in front of the fire, her arms outstretched to him. "Like it as much as the beard?" he asks her.

He has to bend his knees a bit so they're face to face, and jealousy hadn't looked good on her, but there's no place next to it with all these plates, the heat of the fire, and his dimples beneath her hands filling her up in love. "I do," she whispers, scruffing her palms on his prickly cheeks.

"What do you want to do?" There's still a few hours of light, but she's stepping onto his toes so she's closer to him, the green swirls of thread sewn into her bodice pressed flesh to him, and he can _see_ too much of her, can feel too much of her, heavy fabric of her dress against his legs, soft hands moving from his jaw to his arse. She pulls him to her, and then she's kissing him, and he breaks away with a laugh since she's getting cheeky. "I didn't mean me," he tells her, but when she kisses at his chin, he doesn't sound sure of it himself.

"Don't," she mumbles, and the seconds they're kissing again, tongue and hot and _oh_ , he's lifting her up and biting her lip for her, and it's _I miss you_ into his teeth, _I love you_ spelled with their tongues, and "No," because someone's clearing their throat away from them. "Go away."

"Arya," he says, trying to pull her off.

"Rickon," he announces himself, a bored look to his blue eyes, his red hair unruly and stressed through like Jon. "..Breathe," he demands, because after she's rolled her eyes, she's kissing Gendry again.

"Stop," he whispers, his skin burning too hot, Rickon looking too annoyed, Arya too like _that_.

"What is it?" she snaps like she's miffed, stepping a proper distance near Rickon and away from Gendry. "Why do you have that pack?" As soon as she's asked, though, she thinks of the practice yard, and a part of her's just glad she has the chance to say goodbye.

The sun's still high up outside; Shaggy yawns from the open door. Rickon suddenly smiles, bright like those Baratheon banners and his favorite candy, and he just says it since he means it, since like in the practice yard when he wasn't using the sword he'd held, his hands are starting to shake. "I'm going to get Shireen."

And it has to be more than just that he needs her, but it isn't a rocky road of love right now, cliffs overlooking the sea.

"Jon's letting you go?" she guesses. She knew he'd leave anyways, approval or not, and she feels guilty somehow. She remembers their talk about leaving and coming back, and a part of her wonders if that was him. Or her, still. Another part of her wants to kiss Gendry again, but he isn't looking at her.

"He sent a raven, but I'm not waiting for a reply. Figure she needs an escort."

"Chivalrous," Gendry adds. Intelligently. She'd smack him if she could.

"I won't stay forever," he assures him, but that look on his face, the way he acts like he'll say something as lovesick as his face appears -- he walks out.

She watches the entry (exit) with a confused look, but it isn't the last time someone will leave just to come back like everything used to. It's seconds before Gendry comes to her side and wraps his arm around her, mumbling quietly that Rickon's strange. "Yes," she laughs, but it's --

"What's wrong?" 'Cause she's stopped laughing, and the way she leans into him isn't steam or molten or flame, her dramatic sigh and her fingers finding their way through his.

It isn't sad either, and she's thinking of Catelyn Tully again. Feeling like her. "I miss how it was sometimes," she admits, and when she turns so they're fit together and he near trips over her leg and their arms are a slow parry together and her lips are capturing his again, and it's a sweet nothing of a kiss.

He presses his lips to her forehead after, and she smiles into his chest, twines her hands behind his back so they're close. Wonderfully close.

And tomorrow.


	33. All the Charm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> But how serious and solemn everything is in this wolfwood catches up to her, a reverence in the bark and a song in the trees that isn't to be taken lightly. "Can you tell me again?"
> 
> "Tell you what?" he needs to know, 'cause the answer _anything_ is sticking to the roof of his mouth.
> 
> "What you told me when you gave me your cloak?"

They're stumbling their way to the forge through the dark.

Or at least, she's the one stumbling and tripping over her feet, quiet wisps of laughter bubbling up from somewhere deep inside her as she twists her fingers in his sleeve and drapes herself over his arm.

"Arya," he laughs, a low, cautious rumble. He's half-dragging her, half-carrying her, and when she doesn't sound as close to a giggle as she is, she's scowling at whoever passes by them. Seven unlucky souls so far: Jon (he's leaving three days from now for true), the random men and women they've seen since they left the dining hall (" _Fuck off, Rorrin,"_ ) and now the poor stableboy's her enemy. "Stop," Gendry tells her, a smile in his throat when he tries to guide her just a bit off the path.

All she does is laugh, light, like every part of her is in her steps, the way she hangs onto his arm -- she tries to stop him from walking, from walking _her_ , but then she's tugging on his shoulders, forcing him lower to her height, and he's staring straight into her eyes, and it's all the pieces of him.

Someone else brushes past them, and it was _so presumptuous a bastard blacksmith call a noble lady by her first name_ , but that doesn't bother him like it used to, so he's laughing down to his bones, clutches onto Arya's hands so she'll stop trying to unlace his shirt here in the open night.

"Stop," he tells her again, like he don't mean it, and he's starting to worry more for himself than her since mischief's starting to leave her eyes. The innocence is gone from them, too.

"Gendry," she sighs, twisting her fingers into his sleeve again, holding him close as she can since they're walking again, just a few more steps to go.

"Yes?"

And he's patient, gods, he's so patient with her, but she isn't tipsy or drunk or insane, she's just _happy_. It's washing through her like rain, maybe, as she thinks of how happy her silly sister must have been when it was confirmed, if Willas wept before she did because they were having a baby in this world that seemed to be brightening in a touch of joy, and everything is so nice.

It is.

"We should do something," she hums, letting go of his arm just long enough for him to open the smithy door.

They enter, and the red from the fire caught glowing in her hair, the stain on her soft green dress, the way she _smiles_ so bright it's spreading onto his face and pulling at his mouth -- it might not be what she wanted, but all he thinks about doing is kissing her.

She's been the wholesome ache to all his empty, most of what he sees when he sleeps, and right here in the small space her eyes roam over, the place he's noticed with a touch of his heart she calls home, she's been all he's wanted since before he knew what life was promising either of them.

Her dress rustles when he takes her side in his hand, pulls her towards him in the endless soft fabric that he knew would come undone if he'd just unclasp that pin over her midriff. She told him so at the feast, loudly, on the bench at the table below the dais where everyone but her brother and fucking Dorne could hear her make him choke on his ale.

He thinks about doing it now, though, of her skin pale and warm against him, firm but soft, and _gods_ , the pink of her nipples pressing to his chest, but she's raising her long, tapered sleeve to drape her arm over his shoulder, and it's like they're trying to dance or she's trying to put him in a headlock.

"I didn't think you liked it," he murmurs. His arm easily joins his other curved around her hips, a tangle of his fingers slightly up to brush through her hair, her smile disappearing into his sternum -- she hides her laughter there, her feet a silent shift on the stone floor, and all he thinks again is he'd like to kiss her.

Or not, 'cause it's been minutes or seconds, he doesn't know, but they're a slow sway to the left before they still and linger in the stillness of here, a crackle in her silver eyes and her tongue slipping over her lips. "You smell like soap and leather," she smiles lazy and sweet and sugar and girl, and again, he's worrying more for him than her.

He feels sorta honorable and willful and restrained with all this saying _no_ , but he hasn't really done anything to not make her go _yes, yes, yes_ when she's beneath him, writhing and glistening and -- yes. "We stopped dancing," he observes, though they weren't, marveling instead in the ease of her fingers curling through his hair.

"You stink," she says like a grin, dimples biting into her cheeks. When she pulls enough away to start with the ties of his jerkin, he figures he was just going to take it off eventually anyways.

"You look nice," he whispers, so it makes her grin when she forces his arms up over his head and tugs the rough leather shod doublet up and off.

She speaks breathlessly, slips her hands beneath his shirt, and gods above, the way she fits so _perfectly_ against him has him the best part of lightheaded. "Take it off," she says, and she laughs like everything's light and pointless but came to _now_ , and it's all these pieces of him.

"Take what off?" He clears his rugged throat, presses his hand to the small of her back, presses her into him, feels the braid woven into her loose hair with his fingers as she watches him thoughtfully.

She looks focused 'till she doesn't anymore, but then her eyes are brightening just a touch, burning molten as fitting as her hands are, tracing over his skin feeling like fire. "Take off.. Gendry, take off _everything_ ," and there's so much of her laughter, more than he ever thought there would be when he fooled himself into thinking there could be one day.

_And tomorrow._

"Feels good like this," she says all hollow, warmth flooding into her voice like heat's pulsing beneath his skin. Her breath's caught in her throat, but he figures she isn't talking about his hands while he pretends to know how to work away the pin that'd loosen her dress to the floor, his rough fingers a brush of gathered silks until it's parted, her silhouette free to his arms casing around her slowly. She doesn't mean his hands, yet she shivers from the cool warmth of being left in her shift when her gown drifts down to the floor from her one shoulder to the other. It'd be tantalizing if there wasn't something so casually innocent and _routine_ in it, the normalcy that permeates them in the stiffness of everything else, and the world's going too good right now, isn't it?

_Feels good like this._

"It does," he agrees, has to, because there's nothing he'd deny her. Not here in the smithy, next to shelves of arrowheads and helms and daggers. It does feel good, the bare skin of her shoulders beneath his rough fingers when his fist leaves her hair, but below the stretch of flesh is something soft, whatever ladies wear under their gowns with what feels like rows of ties and buttons, and -- no. "Arya," he laughs. And then he can't stop.

"What?" she grumbles, like he's being stupid, but she seems more intent on just pressing into him and flexing her hands through his, all elbows and her cherry laugh and the warmth in his chest.

He doesn't tell her that he doesn't know how to take off her shift, he just holds her and let's her hold him, his feet following hers in a soft sway that's dancing and _do you think she's carrying a girl?_ amidst a kiss that's sweet and not much of anything but how nice right now is.

\- -- - -- -

"How'd it go?" he asks her the next day, and it's sunny and warm and her toes are up in the air, her legs bent up since she's on her stomach on the bench, and she's too much leg.

But she tells him Jon and their goodbye 'fore he's set to leave, how it unintentionally came about with her asking about his packing. Only Jon didn't know if she was asking sincerely or genuinely in the way she might have when she was eight if he was leaving for leisure instead of life, but the part of her that was an awful sister just wants him gone already. Almost.

She takes a deep breath, and Gendry takes the hint. "He talked to me, too."

"It isn't that," she starts just to stop, a fret of her brows and a cross of her ankles. "What'd he talk to you about?"

"Nothing much," he answers, evasive, but it's a lie she sees through, and she's always seen him. Always. "I'm s'posed to watch out for you."

She grins something mischievous and slightly condescending, like she's too confident and headstrong and knows she doesn't need him. "What'll you do?"

"I'm not sure," he admits, 'cause this stopped being for survival or her crying in the crypts or her thrashing in dreams she can't remember. It's just choice now. "I can make sure you stay out of trouble?" He grins with a guess, turns his attention from her to the arrowheads he's supposed to be making.

"I don't need you to do that."

"You don't need me to.. forget it," he smiles. And them he winces, a second of a burn on his wrist from a second of carelessness.

"What'd you do?" Her sigh was _almost_ a laugh, and he shoots her a look just to see her standing from the bench with a glimpse of her knees before her dress falls to cover them. He shouldn't care so much for a breath of skin he's seen before.

She's almost demure, the way her graceful, delicate hand brushes over the light grey wool, the prim way she lifts her dress to make her steps easier. There's a courtesy he knows she doesn't usually care for, and maybe it's the talk she had with Jon, something unspoken and heavy and resolved like expectations and Sansa " _fucking seriously_ " penning a letter reminding her to spend more time with the seamstress. "I'll have to spend my time with everyone else!" Arya had protested in a huff hours earlier. The smallfolk, only she wouldn't call them that.

"You look nice," he has to say. It's true, and his heart's sticking to his throat with how her eyes crinkle and near him with her hand on his arm. He can't remember what they were talking about, if it even mattered.

_Feels good like this._

"So you're supposed to watch me?" The way she asks it, like honeyed spice, like a challenge, really isn't what Jon had meant.

"No," he huffs, 'cause the back of his neck's red. Gods, she needs to quit biting her lip. "Stop that."

She's a quick "Stop what?" Automatic and sharp, her eyes holding him like that.

It's three seconds before he reaches for her, a single breath until their mouths are locked feverishly, and they don't quite _fall_ to the floor, but they come pretty close. His knees were buckling anyways.

She combs her fingers through his hair, makes him groan loud and rough like his hand moving down her waist, but she can take it, she's fierce, and " _Gods_ , Arya."

Her moan is soft, her sigh softer, and she's loud when her breath catches, loud enough that a slow pulse of heat spreads through him. Her teeth graze his lips, part when he spreads them open with his tongue and licks into her mouth to taste her. He's so hard for her, rocking slightly against her and finding the pressure of her hip, and she tugs him down, pushes against him. They roll over the warm floor, a tangle of legs until she spreads hers, but the way she says his name -- gods.

"Oh," she says, breathy and gasping and urgent, "oh, _Gendry_."

"Yeah?" he asks, like an idiot, but she's arching and shifting her legs wider, so ready already with her knees pressing against his hips, her dress all pushed up and caught between them.

"I need," she starts, though he's already groaning and just answers her with another, his tongue on her neck and his fingers tracing the bodice of her too-lowcut gown making her inaudible. "Gendry, gods, I.. I _need_ ," she moans, strained and loud, her words not much more than her body trying to get that want burning beneath her skin.

Her hands slip up beneath his tunic, feel the faded scar lashed into his skin, and he shudders -- her hands, her bite gentle at his jaw. "Need what?" But he barely hears himself over how verbal she is, the sweet noises she makes with each press of him up against her, each lick of his tongue at her collarbones when she pushes his head down. "It'd be easier without the dresses," he tells her, idly, yet his name gasped from her throat catches his own breath, hooks in his ribs and knots it, 'cause she's squirmed 'till she got his leg between hers, his thigh pressed against her when she rocks her hips up. He can barely breathe.

"It'd be easier if I wasn't wearing anything," she says in a colorful rush, sharp gasps to each sharp little nip of his teeth over her skin. She can't stop _moving_ , everything in her so reactive, and her groping at his back turns to her nails biting into his skin while he traces the curve of her breast with his tongue.

"Don't move," he tells her in a low murmur, "stay," with her clumsy fingers on his back, the wet heat of her through her smallclothes beneath that dress angled up against his thigh, her head tossed back with her neck bared, her halo of brown hair splayed around her.

But she shakes her head with a sound like another laugh, and she raises her legs to hook her ankles around him, and they're fitting so perfectly, he could just stay here with her, fully clothed, together, doing nothing but existing and giving her anything he can and taking only what she wants him to have from her, and he whispers it again, a faint graze of his teeth at her ear. Stay, _Arya, stay. Stay with me._

She's a shaky moan that curls around him, warms their way aligned and melting and good, and gods, he thinks, when she slants her mouth back to his, her tongue a hot spread over him that stills and finishes, less wet and more chaste and sweet and soft. When he opens his eyes, brushes his lips gently around her bottom lip, he can count all of her dark eyelashes crescenting her cheek, can see each speck of grey in her bright eyes flicker with the feelings that are only her.

And she's so beautiful, it's hurting his chest where only she's ever been to reach, and her fingers are soft in the way she curls them into the ends of his hair. "Gendry," she whispers, quiet and breathy.

"Hey," he answers, his grin wide and stretching at his lips, his eyes near black in what he can see in hers. He's still hard against her stomach, trying to keep her still when she already is, her strained breaths panting and flushing her face and neck red. The tops of her breasts are pink, too, her smile so sweet, and this isn't the closest he's been to her nor the closest he'll ever get, but it feels like it here, with her wiry strong arms holding onto his shoulders, her neck tasting like salt.

"Do you want to -- can we..?" There's a pretty blush rising in her cheeks, coloring the faint freckles a Braavosi sun tanned into her skin, and she barely asks him anything, hasn't really like this since she first demanded a kiss from him before her nerves took all over.

All these little pieces of him. He can't say _no_ to her, not always, so he catches her eyes flicker to the leather curtain hiding their room, catches her hand to pull her to her feet when he's on his, and she isn't letting go.

He's only just remembered it's the middle of the day, though, with a very unlocked door, and he doesn't know how they've gotten here. From rough kisses and lustful grunts seconds before to the tentative hand she has curled around him now. From the shite side of the Kingsroad of mistrust to a bed in his place she sits on, a frame that creaks and pillows that smell like smoke and girl.

Her eyes are dim and soft, the way she says it almost transfixing. "I want to touch you," clear and a pulse of heat, her shaky voice an unsure edge of confidence he isn't sure about, but he tugs his shirt over his head, and her eyes look so _delighted_ by his sweaty, muscled skin that he laughs.

She's so easily pleased, so _beautiful_ , tracing and palming at his chest when he sits next to her. She grins like she'll say something, a low hum in her throat, but she's silent instead, silent like mischief or something lethal, and it feels like it when she presses her hands to his shoulders, pushes down so he's laying on the coarse blanket, shuddering when she lifts her knee to the other side of his hip.

She straddles him, and it's all their heat aligned and close, and she's -- she's falling apart, her mouth a tumble open, lips swollen and parted and gasping when he can't _not_ buck up against her.

Her hands are slick ontop of his chest, and she can't stop trembling, can't stop _moving_ , her hips rolling over his, heat and together and the sweet little sounds she makes. He didn't know she'd be so much fire, so many smiles, so _relentless_ in everything she does. He pulls her forward, a slide and a rub and how wet she is tearing a grunt from his throat, but he only tastes her kiss for a second with her hands clawing at his chest before she's gasping into his ear, her breath so frantic and strained like she's come already.

"Gendry, ah.. ah, _please_ , oh, gods."

With her palm over his heart, he whispers it into her skin, carves it onto her with his tongue. _I love you_ , for all the times he'd never gotten to say it, the words etched into her throat with salt on her skin and the edge of his teeth, and when he so suckles the spot over her pulse, she's a shudder of feeling.

And everything's burning, and she's lost, and if this is it, she doesn't want to be found, so not much else means anything out of the way he's grunting her name into her neck and pressing up into her needily. Everything's bright red, burning white, and the muscles in his abdomen flutter when she skims her hand lower, and _oh_ , whatever he says she can't make sense of, his words turning into a low moan when her hand slips beneath the hem of her dress covering both of them to reach the ties of his breeches.

"Arya," he says in a rush, but she's focused on unlacing him, and he's so hard in her hand, and she's so fearsome, so shivery, biting and licking at her bottom lip, and gods, her mouth, he's never thought about it 'till now. "Arya," he says again, light like her fingers, only she's sitting up and moving away from him.

"I want to see," she murmurs, that combination of shy and brave that has her biting at her lip again. "I want to see you when you.."

"You have," he reminds her, but then maybe not really, 'cause kissing her still feels new, a novelty if how breathless she is tells him anything.

"But it's different now," and things have changed, and she sits on his thighs with such ease that she need not move ever, if she wants it, and she does, she _does_ , oh, gods, she does, and he chokes on her name when she curls both her hands around him tightly, feels the white heat of him pulled free from his breeches.

" _Arya_."

"Shush," she demands quietly, her voice quivery like it's herself she's pleasing instead of him, exploring touches along the length of him from the dark hair at his groin to the tip of him slick with his come. It's like she's trying to remember how to touch him, how he likes, but she's so good, better than she must think, and he'd tell her if she wanted him to speak, but he feels he couldn't if he wanted to.

She squeezes, her thumb stroking the underside of him, and he has to clench his jaw, bite his lip, keep himself from thrusting into her hands roughly. He can barely breathe, can't keep his eyes open, and the way she glides her hand over him, uses the light edge of her nails to circle him and feel him throbbing and near twitching in her palm, it pulls a low moan through him. It colors want in a spread all throughout his body, shudders through him tightly, and he isn't sure how long he'll last.

When she finds his foreskin and pulls it back, reveals the head dark and glistening and still pulls at him lightly, strokes him smoothly with her palms wet, he rolls his head back and moans, reaches up for her, for something, and he finds the curve of her breast over all that fabric and squeezes.

"Oh," she gasps, and he's -- his words collapse in his mouth, stick to his tongue and fall into another loud moan. "It's sorta stupid," she laughs, out of breath, but all he can think is _beautiful, blessed, I love you, fucking hell,_ because she's lowering her head and licking her lips, and everything fades to nothing when she kisses the gleaming white tip of him so softly. "It does look sorta stupid," she repeats airily, and he opens his eyes to see her lick him off of her lips, and he has to laugh, too, 'cause it does, it is, she's --

"So good," he rasps, but he's broken, and it isn't just his hips moving but all of him, and her hands are more sure now, more confident, stroking and rubbing and "Fuck," he says just as broken, twists his other hand up under her dress in a need to touch _her_ , and she's so wet. So good.

_Feels good like this._

Her moan is a high, keen sound, nearly a cry, but she's a string of breathless words, and they're shaking together. Pulsing and on fire, and he's so stupid, but he can't keep fooling himself. He's tasted her sweetness, she's licked his cum, his fingers are coated in how wet she is, rubbing and circling and _there_ , she's gasping, a breathy moan, and he's out of focus with her fingers tight and tighter and pulling, and they're fucking even if they're not.

It's caged in his chest, everything, and it starts and ends with her name, their skin hot and wet, quivering, and she's a spasm when he presses against that spot that makes her cry out, and he's nothing but a quick spread of warmth flooding and capsizing and here, his come white on her hands, her dress.

All he can do is try to breathe, but she's shaking, _all_ of her, and he's -- he _is_.

He's drifting, but he's here while she's a tumblr forward, her hair damp and her breaths ragged, hot against his neck with the chaste kiss she marks into his skin.

"Gendry," she whispers, airless. Bright. Satiated.

It's grounding.

\- -- - -- -

"This is leisurely," she remarks, like she's supposed to say something _grounding_ , and he scoffs at her.

"You're being weird," he says, informative like she sometimes does.

She takes his arm instead of hitting him, and it's another stroll the weirwood trees, their third already today, but it isn't just the faces colored red, it's the leaves bright and turning crimson and alive, full of spring and the histories she tells him like he ought to know, and since it's warmer, she can't get frostbite from stepping into the pond. It's another worry that isn't living in his chest, and she loosens her grip on his elbow so slowly, it's a twist of her palm 'till it's pressed with his and their fingers are twined like it was an accident. Maybe it was.

"I'm being civil," she huffs, as light and the wind and the ways the trees dance, but she grimaces like it's something awful, and he has to scoff again. "Sarra told me to be nice to you," she 'splains.

It's no secret that she's puzzled him again, and he has to ask, "Why?" 'Cause those little questions that used to keep her simply _talking_ to him are just wonderful when it's her voice and her smile and the ridiculous laugh she sometimes lapses into without thinking about it.

"Because she was going to force me into another dress," like it makes more sense than anything in the world. _We're married._ "And so I wouldn't have to, I told her you were cross with me and it'd make me feel better to dress like an 'urchin' like she put it, and she gave, but she told me to be nice to you 'specially. She just doesn't know you're _so_ awful," she laughs, a quip she doesn't believe if her dimples are anything to say about it. She squeezes his hand, her smile tinging with something unsure for just an instant, and maybe one day she'll understand why.

"Makes sense," he says, only it doesn't really. Nothing does, and he's too far into it.

She stops quick, though, turns to face a tree not too far away. It doesn't have a face, is just beside a smaller pond he's never paid attention to, but she's transfixed all the same. It's a second before realization hits him like her vice grip on his hand, and oh. "That's the tree," she tells him softly. There isn't a hint of the anguish in her eyes from not finding it days upon days upon weeks ago when she swore she needed it like life depended on it, and it's such a blessed thing. It's her that starts them walking again.

Almost a forth trek.

It feels different.

"I saw you once," she murmurs. A raven quorks somewhere in the trees.

"When?"

"In Braavos," she answers, but then she has to think about that, 'cause he's staring at her like she's dumb. "No, I mean -- it wasn't a dream." It wasn't, she knows that much, knows what he must be thinking 'cause he's a thick swallow and a redness to his ears. "Not like that, anyways," she teases, maybe just a little too pointedly.

"Shut up," he mutters, and when she snorts, he almost asks if she did. Does. The real thing's better, anyways.

"Anyways, I saw you."

"And?" He arches his brows at her, expects her to tell him _something_ that gives him some idea what she's thinking, though maybe it's better she doesn't. Her dreams from Braavos were never good, yet he's not stupid enough to think they stopped.

"And.. what'd Jon tell you?" she asks instead, like a challenge, but she's burning with curiosity. She is. Beneath all this stoic expression.

He laughs then, however, and it's a second of her worry 'cause he's almost hysteric like he rarely gets when he's nervous. "It wasn't really a warning, really."

"Really?" she challenges, unimpressed, elbows him when he shrugs.

"He told me to be careful."

"..Of your safety?" It's two seconds, and she's gone from light and idle, a dimpled smile and her hand tight through his to a stance that terrifies him just a little.

Well, Tom once told him a woman should scare him a little, 'course that was when he'd had his nose broken and couldn't play his lute. Ah, well. "From Jon," he remedies with a cheery smile, like that makes it any better, the threat and his departure tomorrow.

Another second, and her laugh is so bloody loud. "He'll kill you."

"Arya."

"I'm serious," she snickers, then all-out _giggles_ , and she'd be so adorable if she wasn't making him worry more than Jon had. "He maybe could have killed you already. I bet Rickon could have," but that doesn't make her laugh. "Oh, gods, he could, couldn't he?"

"Arya," he sighs, retaking her hand to pull her closer to him until she raises her eyes to his, grey and blue and the sunlight pale on her eyelashes and her chin all rough from his stubbled kisses. "Take a breath."

"Take _my_ breath," she tells him, the quirk of her smile wicked and innocent and something so her that he's.. he's.. he doesn't have a word for it. It's a swell in his chest, a cage of his ribs. She might've been the one to teach him to say the words.

"I love you," and the way her eyes light up when he says it -- gods. Here on this fractured day, sunlight and too tired, too sad, too happy, and so _here_ , he needs to say it more often when it makes her look like that.

"Why'd he tell you to be careful?" she asks as casual as she can, when it's been moments of his eyes locked to hers with something smoldering and she can breathe again. Her heart's erratic, she can feel it, and he's all of this warm and vast and familiar and she has to bite at her lip.

"Now's a bad time for us to have a baby," is all he says, like he's joking, like she should be laughing at the prospect he'd be damn near killed instead of just gelded.

She does laugh. Like it's a lifeline, all these shipwrecks of butterflies in his chest. "So be careful," she repeats, an emphasis on the last word that really isn't what Jon meant.

"Arya."

"He said it," she shrugs, a wisp of cool and nonchalant and snorting. But how serious and solemn everything is in this wolfwood catches up to her, a reverence in the bark and a song in the trees that isn't to be taken lightly. "Can you tell me again?"

"Tell you what?" he needs to know, 'cause the answer _anything_ is sticking to the roof of his mouth.

"What you told me when you gave me your cloak?"

"I --" He started just to stop, brings his left hand holding hers up to his lips. "You don't remember?"

"You don't?" she accuses, deadpan.

And he does. She's all he hears, all he sees. He remembers.

"I've loved you since I was six and ten," he tells her like he had the first time, only when he said it then, it was still like he'd been saying it for years, easy and honest.

"That was before," she huffs, frowning her pretty mouth up at him.

"Are you going to wed him?"

"I could," she threatens, since he's being stupid, but it's a beat of silence before he laughs at her grimace. She'd rather anything else than marry Ned Dayne, as kind as he was. "Tell me."

"If I was a lord," and he doesn't say it like he had then, when the thought of it seemed farther away than the tree just next to him, a dream of the future instead of something in the flesh warm and soft like she is. "You'd be my wife."

"After that," she protests, but oh, her lips are parted, her cheeks turning pink.

"I don't have anything to offer you?" he frowns, roughs at his stubble with his free hand. "That isn't as nice."

She rolls her eyes. "Is, too."

"Right. I told you we were doing it proper, though, that might be most important."

"Oh," she huffs again, presses her cheek to her left shoulder so she isn't looking at him. "You were supposed to tell me the nice things." _I mean you're stupid._

"I vow to love you, then," he says. Repeats really, from months ago, forever, and it always comes back to this, doesn't it?

"And?"

"And what?"

"You don't have anything else to say?" Her mouth's a simpered frown, but she's so adorable. And he is, she thinks, with his cheeks getting redder and redder.

"There is more," he admits, actually almost a sliver of embarrassed. "You don't want to hear it all now, though." And oh, doesn't she, but he met her years ago, and the way she looks at him now, it's like when he kissed that scar on her stomach and she held him. "Tell me something," 'cause his throat is all caught up, her eyes captive.

And she does, just not with words, just pushes up to her toes and lifts her arm to curl through the ends of his hair and pulls his face down to hers, a kiss of a kiss, and she's taking his breath, taking his words, breathing him her own.

"Kiss me," she whispers, and he is, they are, and he's not sure who reaches for who, but they're arms and legs pressed and his thumbs on her hipbones, her nails scratching at his scalp. She turns her head, feels his kiss trail across her cheek, feels him bend just a bit at his knees so he can kiss the corner of her chin where she's all rubbed raw from too much kissin'. "I might die if you stop," she says in a whisper just as soft, and all at once, it's so clear.

"I'm dead if you do," he answers quiet, low, but no sweeter pain than that, the ache in his chest, the pull at his back where she's lifting the hem of his tunic up so her palms can touch his skin, warm and close, hot need starting to coil its slow burn into his belly, smoldering a deep red. Glowing, but with her light, and they're so together here.

They stay standing still for a moment or hours, his lips at the corner of her mouth, her breaths pushing her chest against his slowly, and with just their tunics, she really ought to wear something under hers. Gods.

"Kiss me," she says again, just a little more loudly, setting back on her heels, her face tipped up to him. Something in him jumps, flexes, 'cause she said it like she was saying she wants him -- she does, so, _so_ much that it's twisting at her heart and beating for him, and his does, too, he does, 'cause right now, for the rest of ever, she's most of his past, all of his future.

He does kiss her again, nudges her lips apart with a soft brush of his tongue over her lower lip, and she sighs sweet, tastes sweeter, lifts her hands up to his shoulders to press him down to the forest floor. Just like the bed, only she's had feathers and coarse linen and a stone floor and refused all of them for dirtstains and sunlight pouring through the sheens of her hair, warming all of him, and nothing else seems more fitting than here. Here with all his heart, the delicate way she lowers herself onto her knees over him, wraps her arms around his shoulders sitting up and keeps kissing him.

It's soft and it's slow, her parted mouth eager and gentle to his, a quiet hum from her throat. He can feel her smile into the kiss, and maybe it's a lot of things, but mostly it's now. His stubble against her cheek. The gentle way his hands hold her hips. His tongue licking hot-wet at hers. She can barely think, her heart so full of him, but she finds a way to say it, quiet, but he already knew.

"I'm ready," she murmurs, pulling back just a fraction. She watches his eyes open to see the blue so dark it's black and traces her hands up his sleeves, makes little patterns on the fabric, because she isn't nervous. Not after just saying it.

"Are you sure?" He asks thoughtfully and soft, a tilt of his head so they're forehead to forehead.

She knows he's likely to ask seven more times, will stop the instant she wants to, but she should be asking him, maybe. She bites her lip, already a bit swollen, and twists her fingers into his sleeves. "Are you?"

"I am," he answers. Only a short pause with his smile, felt just by the stretch of his cheeks, the lift of his mouth.

"What changed?"

"Nothing did," he admits. His voice is a shiver when she lifts his shirt slowly, fabric and her warm skin a trace to his sides that heats through him tantalizingly, hollows out his chest, shakes in his words. "This is everything. Perfect." And it is, maybe not what either of them imagined, but they're as light as the wind, the birds in the distance so far away from them here where they're a lot in love, a lot willing to be as much each other's as possible.

"Perfect," she agrees easily, inhaling sharply when he does.

She sets her hands to his shoulders first, where he's familiar, but she's seen him without a shirt at least eight dozen times and still revels in the way his muscles play beneath his skin, how it tightens when she traces her hands over his heart, over his abdomen. She traces the lines defining his torso delicately, lightly with her nails, but when she skims bravely lower to the waist of his breeches, he covers her hand with his.

"Not now," he murmurs, shaky, and he kisses the pretty pout dragging down the edges of her lips, groans lightly when she bites him all fire and teeth. "Can I --"

"You don't have to ask," she huffs, but just 'cause she's curling in her impatience and leaning away from him, nearly dragging a _come back_ from his throat until she's lifting the hem of her tunic up and off, quick and a graceless sort of graceful that stops and slows everything since she's bare from the waist up.

"Arya," he says dry, and he wants to brush his thumb over her pink nipples, wants to make them hard and taut so she cries out with an arch of her back, a feeling so good it melts her bones, makes her gasp.

"I'm sorry there isn't more," she murmurs suddenly, maybe quieter than she's ever been. And of all the things to say, everything she could be thinking with her hands on his chest, his eyes on hers 'cause they're perfect, _beautiful_. And that she's feeling that inferiority now, thinking her tits aren't big enough when --

At first, all he can do is laugh. As much as he can, more air than anything until he chokes on what he should say with a loud laugh that makes her frown down at herself. _I'm not_ , he could say; she might like that, might believe him. "Arya, you're stupid," is all he manages, a rough edge, a truth. He watches her nipples tighten, hears the shallow breath she takes, and gods, she's all skin in the sunlight, glowing and fleshed out curves and a freckle on her ribs he wants to kiss. "You _are_ ," he whispers.

"I am," she agrees, a cry since he's marking her neck with kisses, biting at her _there_ with the hot trace of his tongue licking and kissing down to her shoulder.

"Perfect," he swears. Murmured nonsense that she is, how she feels, whispered with his tongue and kissed into her with his teeth. She is, she is, and he shudders when she mashes her chest to his, her tight, hot nipples a pressure that makes him groan low. She uses her nails to feel all of his back, clutching at his shoulderblades, his ribs, his arms, palming at each bit of his skin she can touch. He's so hot and firm, starting to slick with sweat that's gooseflesh to her skin, rasping her breasts against him, hearts heavy and pulsing.

They're both hers anyways. He doesn't have much to give her, but she can have everything.

He reaches with one hand for his shirt on the grass and spreads it as best he can, open and warm and next to him in a spot of light the shadowed trees aren't reaching, and she kisses him when he takes hold of her hips again, bites his lip hard so he hisses. He holds her as he moves, almost doesn't manage even that when she starts to kiss down his jaw, distracted little presses of fire into his skin, and her back arches the instant he's rolled them and pressed her to his shirt to the dirt and the dry grass and the few red leaves coloring everything, nothing but a grey-blue sky and branches above them.

"Gendry," she says, and it's so sweet on the air. She presses both her hands to her hair, tugs it loose so she's her soft waves of brown curls spilling around her like some sort of halo, a perfect gleam of sun rays in her smile, and he almost can't look. She's radiant and life and trusting him to that smile, pressing it to his when she takes hold of his hair and tugs his face back to hers. "I love you," she whispers at the corner of his mouth, faint and soft, and _yes_.

He holds onto that, to her, grey eyes wide and bright on her flushed cheeks, and he smooths his hand up her ribs when she squirms, says it, too, but much more soft. _I love you_ , and he kisses that freckle on her left side like he wanted to.

It makes her hip jump as she laughs, but then it's just real that she's all spread and smiling, only a flicker of nerves that's overcome by the way she angles her hips up and pushes against him. She starts to speak, but he slips his coarse hand softly up the smooth skin of her stomach to feel how she trembles, and she whines in need as he strokes the underside of her breast. He outlines her softly with his hand, feels every inch of her hot to his fingers, groans lowly at how her head falls back and she gasps.

She's _fucking_ perfect, arching into his touch while he trails his fingertips over her pale skin, up the curves that fit into his palms the best way, shockstill as he touches her, jaw locking, his eyes darkening, watching each shallow breath she takes that catches in his hands. He lowers his head to kiss that scar on her stomach, thin and jagged and fading, but it makes her legs squirm, her hips press up, and _gods_ , the faint scrape of his stubble against her breast. She might actually die.

"Gendry," she huffs, swallows thickly, clutches at his shoulders since he needs to _do_ something before she loses it 'cause she is, heat and want and love pulsing through her, and she can't. She can't. This really isn't just kissing.

She moans sharply and digs her nails into his back when he brushes the pad of his thumb over the peak of her breast like he wanted to, watches her nipple tighten and harden to a pink bud he's tasted, wants to again. So he does and drags his tongue over her, dots a wet line along the curve of her breast with a slow softness that makes her squirm and cry out when he covers her nipple with his mouth, sears his hot, wet tongue against her with a flick to lavish her and tears the cry from her lips. "Gods, Gendry, _yes_ ," she gasps, writhing underneath him and flexing her hips up on his thigh for the friction she isn't getting.

 _Please_ , and he's nearly as breathless as she sounds, follows her warm skin to her other breast with a careful bite that makes her spasm. He can feel her nipple hardening further as it happens, his tongue licking and kissing at her relentless, so much that her gasps turn into his name, that all of her is moving in shivers that make him shiver, too.

All at once she's burning beneath him, and he trails kisses of fire from her breasts to her stomach, circles patterns of nothing with his open-mouthed touches so she's trembling when he starts untying the laces of her breeches. Just thinking of his tongue, though, licking and sucking and fucking her, spreading her open and tasting her and.. she pulls at his hair 'cause he's kissing her hipbones and further down, and oh, gods. Oh, gods. "You'll kill me," she giggles, just a bit nervous, trying to tug his head away from her breeches, his hands away from the ties he's loosened.

She laughs, but she's shaking, and she whimpers when he pulls back up, kisses each bump of her ribs with a dot of his tongue to taste the salt on her skin. He leans back over her, smiles at how flushed she is, her back an arch, her breasts proud curves, and her grin, gods. "You alright?" He has to ask, slow and sweet, and she is, she _is_ , but he's resting his palm over her stomach, his fingers all splayed over and covering her, and she's too much sensation, her memory too vivid. Her imagination too vivid.

"I want to do you," she tells him, as confident as she can, her hips a subtle lift, light and biting at her lip.

He wants to tug it free, to bite it for her, but he thinks she could mean any number of things and doesn't really realize what she wants until she licks at her lips. _Her mouth._

And all he's wanting is her, and everything he's heard is that he has to get the lass ready before he.. oh, gods. "Arya. _Arya_." He hauls in a shaking breath, feels it churn in his lungs since she's reaching between them and palming him over his trousers, feeling the stiff outline that's throbbing and pulsing and hot, and she's making him hotter. Burning his skin with her chest pressed to his. "This is about you," he grunts, sighs, tries not to collapse. When he speaks again, his voice drops, his words a little halting. "You wanted me to make it good, remember?"

He barely does, can barely remember anything, just curls his fingers through her hair softly and holds her close, tries to not grind into her hand since this is all about her. Her. He'll forget that if she keeps touching him, if she keeps rolling her hips against his thigh, because it's a white heat flooding into him, pouring into her since she sounds close.

"You said you would," she smiles, a tease, a gasping laugh. She reaches up to touch his arms, her fingertips gentle up his wrists and his elbows and creasing a shiver into his ribs. He's murmuring nonsense into her hair, letting her hollow him all out and fill him with every bit of her. All of her love, her heart, the piercing grey of her eyes holding him as this prisoner he's shackled to by the heart. It really might not be what either of them thought, but it's still better somehow.

And they're eight years ago and right now, that first word, that last goodbye, his sixteen years and how he had to stop himself from reaching for her hand. He isn't letting go now, and he freezes -- doesn't freeze 'cause he's burning like a coal, is pressed to her thigh where she can feel how hard she makes him, how hot he is, how he burns, and he -- he suddenly remembers Anguy trying to convince him once that all _this_ wasn't fucking if it was nothing that wouldn't get a lass pregnant. If he does laugh, he know he won't be able to stop, so he doesn't, just feels his heartbeat between his legs when she presses her lips so gentle to his neck, a flicker of chaste heat before she slips out from underneath him.

And all he can do is stare.

Up on his knees, he watches her unlace her boots quickly, watches her kick them away roughly like they're irrelevant. There's a quick sort of hurried grace that makes her so elegant, so beautiful, like a goddess or a sprite of just _Arya_ while she tugs down the coarse cloth of her breeches without a second look. The slide of clothing away, how hot the sun's starting to feel with each bit of her skin he's seeing, not for the first time. Not for the last.

She does a little hop-skip, balances on one leg to pull her right ankle through, but he doesn't watch, as transfixed as he is. He's staring at her tits as she moves, watches how they rise and fall and dance as she bends. He's slack-jawed and staring, and if he doesn't touch her soon again, he might really die though it'd be so sweet, so worth it, 'cause it's her and she's unlacing her smallclothes without a hint of a pause of doubt, a rush of some emotion that stops his heart.

She's nothing but bare and her dark hair slightly damp, properly ruffled through with her swollen lips, his kiss bitten and seared to her skin over her left breast. She's _perfect_ , and for a blink, she raises her arm to cover her chest like she's embarrassed, but she drops it just as quick. He saw it, though, he sees her, sees her fist clench lightly like she's ready to deck someone or banish her insecurities away because there isn't a place for them here. Not with him, and she's smiling.

In her smooth skin pale and glowing, lines of hidden strength and her wisdom suppressed by all that skin he wants to map, he can actually _smell_ how wet she is. How much she wants him. He can feel how he wants her, straining painful and magma spreading through his veins. She isn't red like a coal, she's just pink from love, bathed in all this new sunlight that makes her visceral.

He doesn't know how long he gazes at her, he just knows it's been a while, and her shoulders are straighter, her eyes darker, the peaks of her breasts pulled tighter. He imagines flicking one with his tongue again, making her cry out, and it's a hot rush heavy through him.

"Come here," he tells her low, gruff. He feels all of this coiling inside him, hot and tight in his belly and wanting to uncoil. Wanting to do that uncoiling inside her.

His eyes are half-lidded, half-delirious, and he's heavy and throbbing between his legs when he tugs at the laces of his breeches and kicks off his boots, manages to get his trousers halfway down to his knees before she climbs into his lap.

The faint cool that chilled his skin is replaced by her warm heat, and he breathes deep and inhales her, moans when she threads her fingers through the dark locks of his hair. She pulls his head back and presses forward so they're nose to nose, her quite little gasp something that could twist to a breathy cry or a happy laugh, and the way he holds her is so gentle, so soft.

He brushes his thumbs over her shoulderblades, curves his hands down the bumps of her spine, smooths the creases of her knees with his palm and wraps his arm lightly around her back to keep her close. She fits into his hands and melts, and she feels like she's burning beneath his thumbs, over his thighs, and he's so hard and hot against her belly.

He's still and breathless when she presses her hands to his face, though, draws in a fleeting nothing but a burning breath and holds it like she does him as she cups his stubbled cheeks with her gentle fingers. How she looks at him chips away a little of his heart, one more piece of him, because no one's ever looked at him like that.

She's soft and warm and her eyes are so bright, so loving, and he wants her to be the only one to ever give him that look.

He leans down to kiss her jaw softly, a light kiss that makes her gasp bleed into a moan when he lets his hands fall to her waist, stroking each bit of her sweet skin he can. His palms kiss her hips, and he squeezes, lifts her just a bit, just a _perfect_ bit, and adjusts himself, too, thinks this might be good, trails his lips from the corner of her mouth to her tongue. He kisses her, quick but deep, hard and hot with his tongue curling around hers, and he groans so loud.

Can't keep it in, doesn't want to, drowns out her sharp gasp, his breathy name.

" _Gendry_."

"Arya," he whispers, chokes, 'cause she's so wet. She's so wet. She's so warm, rubbing herself slowly over the length of him hard between them, and it doesn't even matter that he isn't inside her yet. He could live here forever, could listen to all these sounds she makes as she rolls her hips when he rocks his, her slick wetness dripping onto him as she moves.

There's something about that, that she opens herself to him and for him and startles to circle herself over him, slanting her hips each way that'd burn their heat a little brighter, tears that edge closer to her since she can feel it, she can, her hands squeezing his shoulders, her mouth open to the sky and _wailing_.

And this is so new, so scorching that it hurts, churns all those coils in his chest, in his cock as he tries to keep still, shudders with the thought of them as more than this, her cries and his groans and something they have to work with, a push and a pull and a burn and how she presses up against him, urges the slick side of them melting into each other faster and desperate. She grinds, and he grunts, and he'll spill if she keeps murmuring into his cheek, a _please_ of little noises hidden in her jaw. His is locked, and he's aching for any sort of release, and it just -- it feels like now, how her back arches her breasts against his chest, makes that curve of her neck more elegant as they slip and roll and _fuck_ onto each other.

It's heat. It's burning. Everything stops and slows, thickens like everything sweet when she bites at her lip, holds in her words as she spreads her legs wider over him, thighs trembling slightly. Her lip trembles, too, but she isn't afraid.

He might be.

"Arya, are you..?" And he won't finish asking, won't really say it, _ready_ , since it always riles her up. Molten skin, flames burning bright beneath his hands as he strokes her hips, squeezes, holds her gentle as he can and leans the both of them forward.

He presses her to the ground, and while she's murmured a _yes_ that she only just now says more strongly, it's like she doesn't quite know what to do. She watches him as he moves and tugs his breeches and his smallclothes off with a grin that's nearly shy. He's thick, hard, wet with her slicked all over him, and it presses against her belly when he hovers back over her. Strained, but waiting, and she's still, but she's close to tremors.

She holds his shoulders. Locks her hands at the back of his neck. Turns her knees up so her thighs are strong at his sides. Changes her mind in a huff and his groan as she lifts her legs, circles her ankles around him. She holds onto his shoulders again before sighing and reaching up, pulling gently at his hair, and he doesn't laugh when he asks.

"Are you nervous?" A hollow whisper, nothing but loving and kind and tender, his voice and her pulse soft little beats that press together when he kisses her neck lightly.

"No," she says loud and automatic, her heart quickening. Maybe a lie, maybe the truth. Her hands are sweaty against his chest, palms flat, and it's like she's cracking his sternum, splitting into his heart and coloring everything silver grey. "..Are you?"

He pauses, but only for a second. "Yes," and both their words are strained, their chest faint heaves, and her nod onto the ground, her brown hair splayed over his shirt.

Her eyes are so bright and so wide, like pools of starlight in all this sun, all these trees, and it's _yes, me, too, I love you, now_ murmured into their kiss when she tugs him down towards her. Low, insistent need is pulling at him, but it can wait, _everything_ can, 'cause she makes the sweetest sound as he spreads his tongue over her bottom lip and coaxes her mouth easily open.

They curl around each other, mouths and her arms and her knees, so wrapped up in each other in a kiss she deepens with a slant of her mouth. Her tongue is gliding alongside his before she sucks it lightly, mumbled little words he can't catch, somehow understands anyways. She settles her hands up on his shoulders and his arms, covering his muscles and feeling the heat that burns her hands, and when she says it, "I do love you, Gendry," so quiet and soft, as soft as he's holding her, he brushes his lips from her mouth to her chin, kissing her cheek, her nose, her brow, everywhere.

When she melts into him when he finds her lips once more, tastes the sweet heat she is, the moment is right there.

He feels her tense when the head of his length presses against her where she's wettest, their bodies aligned and her knees drawn up and everything in her trembling. He's shaking, too, but he doesn't dare move. He listens to her breaths quiet from the sharp lilts that made her all jagged, feels her start to relax slowly, ease settling into her voice at his chin, nestling into her ribs and spreading through all of her. It calms him as much as her, and it isn't 'till she parts her thighs wider does he notice her nails aren't biting into his back.

"Alright," she whispers before he can ask. She exhales slowly, lifts her hips just a little so he's -- he's --

"Alright," he repeats, licking across her neck, and she smiles when they kiss again, sweet. Hard.

And then he presses forward, and he takes her, and it's both their first time.

She squeezes his shoulders, uses her nails, squints her eyes shut as she doesn't move, doesn't do anything but hold him, _clench_ at him, so wet, so tight he's gritting his teeth and trying to keep from thrusting up into her 'cause it's so good.

She feels so good.

She's hot, and he's _burning_ , and she's so tight that it's aching and sharp pleasure and he's focusing all his restraint on not coming before he's properly even done this. He's watching her closed eyes, too, how her face is a look that just draws out and out, pain starting to flicker over her and pierce him.

He's managed to find her name, steady over her though it's turning painful, too, but he's told her. They'll stop. He will. The look of her pink cheeks and tense jaw will kill him if how fuckimg tight she is won't. "Arya?"

"Oh," a soft, little breath. " _Gods_ ," and she's whining, pain still written into her face as she tries to move her hips just barely, needing something. Anything.

She hisses and bares her teeth, tenses again since it burns a pressure that's starting to sting at her eyes, and she can feel herself stretching, and he grunts, and he drops his head to her shoulder. "You feel so --" she strains, tries to relax. Tries to breathe. She opens her eyes just to close them, 'cause he's _inside_ her, and it feels.. she realizes it's hurting him, too, holding himself still above her, throbbing inside her.

"Arya?"

"Gendry. _Gendry_ ," she gasps quick, a sudden flood of heat starting to build with the slow way she feels them begin to fit together. His arms are starting to shake, and her head's fallen back, her neck bared, and with so much light here, so much everything, she rolls her hips just another little bit since she's feeling this something shift with them, and the burn starts to twist and smolder into something else. Something that makes her choke in a gasp, her mouth wide and her hair flown around her with a red leaf caught in her soft tresses.

"Arya, _oh_ ," he groans, maybe really dying, but he lifts his head again to see her, her silver eyes locked onto his, and the squeeze of her thighs around him and the drag of her nails over his back is enough of an answer. He pulls back, tight but easy 'cause she's so, _so_ wet, he curses when she moans as he pushes into her heat again. A slow thrust that has to be gentle, and she bites the wince away from her lips until the spiral of pleasure drips into her bones and her cry sounds nothing like pain.

"Ah," she whimpers, rolling her hips so he's slicking in and out of how it's starting to feel good, everything inside her pulling at him 'till he pulls right back, pushes down into her so they're connected by the touch of their foreheads, her _please_ little gasps stirring the slow, slightly unsteady pace he's falling into.

He feels how good this is tingling in his fingertips, and he trails them up her arm like fire, takes hold of her hand in his so she's locking them together tight, her breasts against his chest and another push of her hips up wanting.

It doesn't hurt anymore, just burns in the way she's sure she'll combust and he'll implode, and their cries flesh together in each other. She moves, and he moves with her, slick with sweat and the heat that's flaming in their veins, her eyes, their hips slow but starting to curve faster, curl in them to the heat that's firing and rocking them together with a new intense need. Each thrust into her tears a short gasp from her mouth, and every stretch of her wet warmth that grips him harder than her hands ever did pulses his heart into his throat, starts to tremble with how her breaths get more ragged, her moans louder.

She squeezes his hand, rolls her hips up to meet him pushing inside her, and all at once, it's faster, _deeper_ , taking everything she wanted, the same he wanted, the firsts, the only, _harder_ , their skin slicking and searching and finding and pushing up to him again and again.

He's close, he can feel it thrumming inside him, hears her cry almost a scream sharp and high-pitched and needy like she does before she's bursting and shaking and saying his name, his name, those burns of pleasure and _oh, gods, Gendry, yes_ steeling him and coiling inside her, his thrusts guided into her until she wails up at the sun, needy but caught, but this is all her.

He lifts just a little, groans so loud when she hooks her knee over his hip to delve his cock deeper inside her, pulling at him and coating him in how wet she is before he twists his arm between them and feels how her abdomen still flutters with the sensations sparking and flashing her teeth white and biting at her swollen lip. She cries out, arches, shivers so hard when he curls his hand and presses his fingers to the swollen nub of her above where they're joining and pushing and pulling and "Oh," she shakes, spasms 'cause he's circling her so fast, thrusting up into her and holding on as she trembles, rocks her hips quick against his in a new urgency and frictioned need.

So close, so close, there, _there_ , she's crying, trembling, and he loses the sense of anything but how she's flooding him, clenching at him, pulling him to his finish with her.

She goes rigid, every one of her muscles straining against him. Her thighs, her arms, her head fallen back, her neck a glistening arch marked with his kisses, her thighs marked with him. She's ivory and silver and molten and bursting in and out, crying a scream almost like a howl as she falls to nothing and into him, her heart thudding so hard, her hips still moving as he joins her, hot and filling her and she's tumbling into him and breathing so hard, holding him sweaty and spent to her so it's all sun and softer warmth.

" _Arya_." She's still quivering against him since he's released and delved into her and made her his, himself hers.

Gave her everything.

They both tremble. Still burn. Her breaths are melting his cheek, and he's still trying to catch his, his chest and her heart a flutter with each other, but he just holds her, let's her hold him, fall back to the grass and the steadiness of here. _Here_.

"I love you," a quiet whisper faint with her shaky voice, and it warms him a different way as he pulls out of her, shifts onto his side and lifts his arm so she can curl into him.

She does, cooling sweat and his release sticky on her thighs, her hair wet, and they're still _burning_ and this is new and lovely even if she feels like her world is still coming into focus and steadying, and all these leaves overhead are so bright. She is. Their hands are still locked together, slick fingers entwined.

"I love you," he whispers back into her hair, kisses her forehead and can't help but smile as she whimpers. They're.. they're perfect. Right now. Everything is, and their breaths start to return to normal together, his arms tight around her and her nose pressed to his throat.

_Feels good like this._


	34. I Made You Cry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "What are you grinning at?"
> 
> "Nothing." He laughs again, loud and clear, rolls just a bit so he's on his back and her arms are on his chest. She's a smirk of disbelief over him, but her hair spills over her shoulders to taunt his collarbones, and he has so much more of her skin to trace and remember, his thumbs curving soft up her ribs. "They were just all liars."

"I don't think I bled any," she murmurs soft as a hum, light as anything. 

The sun's still high above them, all these branches, leaves colorful and bright and vivid, so it can't be too late. Maybe minutes or hours, but time's been stretched and slowed and passing just for them for years, for now. She's all dried sweat and with messy hair and her leg curled around both of his, and he brushes his fingertips a rhythmic soft rasp of gentle calluses to smooth up and over her back again and again.

"You don't?" Not like he's surprised by the fact, or even she is, 'cause maybe it's been exaggerated that a lost maidenhead was akin to war and pain and all these terrible things that just aren't. They aren't right now, not here in all this light pouring over the holes in his heart, filling her eyes with all this warmth gazing at him.

"It was supposed to," she mumbles, _almost_ a bit snippet like this is his fault, everything, but she smiles so bright the next instant, curls her hand between them to press her palm to his chin, his stubble rough around his grin. "They said it would."

"They said a lot of things," he laughs, 'cause none of them seemed to be true. Especially the sayings that the first time was the worst one, that it'd get _better_. As if it could.

"What are you grinning at?"

"Nothing." He laughs again, loud and clear, rolls just a bit so he's on his back and her arms are on his chest. She's a smirk of disbelief over him, but her hair spills over her shoulders to taunt his collarbones, and he has so much more of her skin to trace and remember, his thumbs curving soft up her ribs. "They were just all liars."

"All of them," she agrees with the cutest little laugh, the one he doesn't hear much, the one he's thinking he'd like to turn into a sigh or a gasp if he'd just brush his hands a little lower. "They said it'd hurt, too. Well, more than it did, I mean." 

She doesn't sound as laughing at that, but then neither does he. "I'm --"

"No," she interrupts, a glint of her eyes like molten fire, a smile curving at her lips that's soon hidden by the bite of her teeth. "It was good. I only.. gods, Gendry, they made it seem like I'd be torn in half or something. It was supposed to be awful." Duty or sacrifice or weakness or other things she doesn't care much about.

"..Was not."

"Not for you," and she giggles again 'cause it wasn't. Isn't. 

She lowers her head to kiss him, just a kiss, but there's all the time surrounded by these trees, the sun, their skin and skin and so much of each other.

\- -- - -- -

"I don't want to let go," she tells him, _stops_ him, her nails rounded little crescents pressed into his palm where she's squeezing. 

He glances to the smithy's entrance, looks down to her, and oh, his heart. "Then come in," he laughs like it's easy, tugs on her hand just a little like the step she's forced to take with it is an accident. He takes her other hand, but she gives it, and they're standing here face to face, her chin roughed and her lips kissed and parting and wet and "Don't," he says quickly. He has to clear his throat. "You shouldn't. Or I -- I have to work. I have to finish a breastplate." And he wouldn't be able to if she sat in there all knees and smelling like forest and Arya and them together. "Just a couple hours," he relents. Then it'd be sunset, and they.. they'd still have all the time. This is routine, but with a bit of an ache. It doesn't hurt.

She's silent a beat, though, almost looking like she'll fight him on it as she brushes her thumbs across his knuckles, twists his hands so she can trace the lines of his palm. "Alright," she whispers, because things still have to be done and gone about normally, but she won't be the first to let go. Won't be. She bites at her lip, and he has to kiss her again. 

So he does, and it near knocks her off her feet, and he whispers it soft, drags it with his teeth soft on her bottom lip, _m'lady_ , and he holds her close 'cause being even a short distance away now is one of the worst things he could imagine. "Couple hours?"

"No more than three," she swears something contrite. He smells like _her_ when she presses her face to his neck, like hours ago in all that sun and her arms and nothing else, and she can feel his pulse jump when she presses her lips to that hollow curve of his neck that makes him moan.

"I really don't want to leave you," he laughs, nothing funny about it, her response a hum into his shoulder, her eyes washed in set silver when she looks up. "After all that."

That. Like being one body for just a little while, or just one soul, or.. oh, gods. Oh, gods. 

"Yes," she says, because what else? Thinking about it just makes it so she can't breathe, fucking _enraptured_ while her cheeks steadily melt her face red and his grin's idiotic, sweet love. "I don't feel different."

A short pause, and he does guffaw again, dazed and happy, his grin splitting his face in two. "About me?"

"No, about me," she tells him. Not quite disappointed, but.. curious. The way she knows that if she presses just a breath closer to him there so she could feel him is _curious_. "I was supposed to feel different. Everyone made it seem like I would."

"Everyone?"

"Yeah," she mumbles, smiling at something he doesn't think he knows yet but hopes to. "Used to say it, Sansa and all her silly friends when we were little, as if they knew. _Know_ ," she snorts, and if he was smug before, she's cockier than he is. 

It isn't like she expected to feel different, as if she'd be some woman remade with a deeper understanding of all life's mysteries and hardships and underhanded trysts. It isn't that at all, but then it isn't just what the women in Braavos said it was either. 

"They were liars."

"Yeah," he agrees, tracing the high curve of her cheekbone with his thumb.

"Yeah," and she moves her hands to his arse, and he has to kiss her again.

It's minutes when they finally tear away from each other, her hands in his hair, his arms are low on her hips, and it's all their heat like they're on a forest floor instead of standing in this daylight with each other, but he has to enter the forge, and she has to start down the path to the keep. 

So she does, and she touches her swollen, kissed lips and grins at nobody all the way to her quarters.

\- -- - -- -

It's slow-spreading heat. 

As she closed her door behind her, she realized these clothes weren't ruined by the dirt like the forge floor sometimes ruined her shirts. And her smallclothes.

She's stripped them all off, either way, untying and unlacing the half-hearted ties Gendry had done for her before they left the Godswood. They're wrinkled and rumpled, and she lets them pile on the floor when she tugs them off, boots and breeches and tunic _almost_ as slow as he'd take them off. 

Her skin's flushed when she sees it reflected in the mirror, pink and maybe shining and so marked by him, it's a slow-spreading heat when she follows with her fingers the kisses he seared into her. Along her throat first, some of the bites faded, some new, bruised as delicately as she traces them further down. It isn't cold but she shivers when her fingertips trace the line of the kiss he'd suckled just above her breast, and she can't keep from laughing, because oh, isn't this just stupidly wonderful. 

She's all melted inside, all gleaming there naked in front of her mirror with memory and how her body portrays it, and it's so stupid. So stupid she's grinning and pressing her hands to her face, feeling her eyes start to sting because it's so stupid, so wonderful, she didn't ever think she'd love that stupid bullheaded bastard boy so much. She didn't. She does.

\- -- - -- -

Most else has been automatic. Uneventful. 

She hasn't been paying much attention, really, just nodded her way through supper and smiled at her potatoes and knew Gendry was probably still in the forge and wondered if he was still thinking about that, too. 

_But it'll be different with us._

All Jon does is tell her that he'll see her in the morning before he's set to leave, and it's Sarra who's giving her a quizzical look, perceptive and smirking, but like everything after that _I love you_ that they shattered in hours ago, it's all a haze, colorless until she's stepping into the warm smithy and seeing the shadow of him move beyond the curtain. 

"I missed you," she calls, and she doesn't feel like a simpering fool or the girl that'd attacked him when he'd entered that solar she was in after years. 

She pushes back the curtain, and the way he's looking at her -- his eyes so blue just tell her everything. "I know I'm late," he says, half a smile, his arms outstretched, his chest bare, and she can marvel later at how there isn't any hesitance like there used to be before she's folding into his chest and he's holding her. 

He kisses the top of her head, and it's like they're one again, could be just skin and hearts forever, a _hello_ of their hands as they find them, the pulse of their heartbeats warm and comfortable and familiar. "I like this," she says quiet, something so far from where they've come. So new somehow, not anything they've missed but somethings they've not quite been able to say.

"I want this," he confesses into her hair, into her back with his arms, into her forehead with his lips, and it's so easy to see the future like this. Years and years, so many of them to make up for the few they lost, all aching and blue and his hair greying and her skin wrinkling and yes. _Yes_. Old and together and just like this because they've always been, somehow, still will be, existing right now and feeling all of it, burning so bright, so for each other. 

_You came back._

_As did you, Arya._

_Did.. did they give you trouble outside?_

_No._

_Did I hurt you?_

_Yes._

_You're a liar._

_I am._

_Stupid._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was short, but I needed this fluff because life couldn't write anything else right now. I hope you lovelies liked it!
> 
> Next we have (finally) all those fun italicized bits from the future in chapter 32 actually starting to happen, so stick around for Jon in King's Landing and a look at where Rickon is and of course, Arya and Gendry with all Winterfell and each other.
> 
> And -- I just would like to let all of you silent readers and constant reviewers and all you kudos leavers that I love and appreciate all of you. I didn't think this story would be this long, but now I haven't planned an end? And the support from all of you is appreciated and wonderful and makes me happier than anything. :)
> 
> Also. If any of you are edricdaynes.tumblr.com, I still laugh embarrassingly loud at how you reblogged my Sansa and Willas thingies and not the Gendrya ones. Bless you.


	35. And Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You look happy," he tells her, and when she looks, he does, too. "And you look nice."
> 
> She doesn't do anything but slide to her feet, though, leaning against him since she wants to not actually say it if she can help it. Goodbye. Nothing good has ever come of it, it seems, but he wraps his arm around her shoulder lightly, might let this one be a good one.

"Are you asleep?"

She stirs just a little, presses into the warmth of him behind her, squirms away from his hand skimming up her tunic with a soft brush of his fingertips along her belly, but _gods_ , it feels so good just to move, to turn in his arms so she's not as tense as he feels since he's awake, too.

Of course he is.

"Yes," she says, and with a ruffle of her hair on the pillow, she tilts her head to watch the last of the fire's glow warm his eyes. "Are you?"

"Yes," he whispers, inflecting the word with a husk of his voice, a lingering note that curves with his smile like his hand over her hips and up her stomach. "I like your skin."

"I love you," she tells him, as soft as she always does in something he should know like it's some secret, but he already knows.

Maybe he's known for years, when she was the jealous, hurt girl that hadn't made sense of it all, and he was still gazing at her like this.

"Tell me again," he insists quietly, feeling her soft little breath hitch when he skims his fingers further up her tunic. _His_ tunic, rough against her smooth skin, gentle with his fingers a slow sweep to follow the dips of her hipbones.

"No," she tells him, and she has to laugh at the stupid look on his shadowed face. She refuses it again, "No," but she's riddled with giggles when his touch turns ticklish.

Her shrieks and her jarred laughter are the payment for the price of all this love, all these gasped chortles won from her in her writhing and his tickle-attacks splayed over her ribs and under her knees. He reaches the arch of her foot when she tries to kick him again, her fists hitting him to stop him from crushing her sides in all this laughter, but he's relentless and laughs _so_ loud when she actually snorts, and he's evil fingers to her playful fists until she bares her neck in a shrieked surrender and tries to squirm away, laughing carefree as their legs tangle together caught in all these sheets, dead quiet when all their fits of arms and knees end with her ontop of him and her breaths aching and ragged and his hands hot over her thighs.

Her palms are flat on his bare chest, and she can feel his heart pounding beneath all that skin and armor she's needled her way through, and gods, she can feel him starting to press up against her, and Acorn Hall.

"Is this what it was years ago?" she wonders aloud, asks, really, with a shake in her voice -- because he knows, of course he does, what little color she can see in his eyes darkening.

"More innocent," is all he can say, because she'd been a girl. With her form starting to fill out those dresses she was made to wear, her teats and an arse some people (stupid people) might have called her wanting for, but he'd noticed, of course he had, and he'd seen her now like he had years ago, breathless and squirming beneath him and laughing with her parted lips and her eyes so grey, and there was more to his mind than just making her laugh.

"Right," but she smirks it somehow, still seeing through him, still _seeing_ him, and that life he wanted isn't so far away, a wasteland for foolish dreamers. Hers isn't either, and it feels like that when she can feel herself smile.

"How do you feel?"

"Good," she murmurs, in assurance to the faint worry she can see frowning at his brow line. "You don't have to ask, though."

_Feels good like this._

He shrugs all he can laying there on his back, his fingers faint circles traced to the linen of her breeches. "I like to," he says careless until he grins, so sweet it tugs at her heart. "I didn't know if maybe you.. were in pain now or something."

"Oh," she blinks, letting her hands fall from his chest to his stomach while she patterns his abdomen, thinks of how.. good. He is. Has been to her. A quiet, fleeting thought tells her that she mightn't deserve it, but she's seen the form of those words shade at his face 'till his scowl could curdle milk, and he hasn't made a face like that in weeks. So she won't, because they're here, and she hears him lovingly call her stupid somewhere in the weirwood trees weeks and weeks ago and falls just a bit harder with all these feelings starting to well behind her eyes.

"I'm not," she adds quietly. "Hurting." She feels his chest so warm under her hands, so strong, but there's a sweetness there, too, and she has to bite her lip. "Thank you, though. Gendry."

"Arya," he whispers, his _stupid_ grin so infectious she grins, too. She laughs like a fool and moves her hips just a little, a rock against him that makes him groan low and laughing. " _Arya_ , have you thought about it?"

She giggles so bright the fire seems dim, but it's starting to flood everywhere, burning beneath his skin, pulsing between her thighs, and she says it something wicked, "Of course," another bite at her bottom lip when he slides his hands up from her thighs to her hips. He clenches her shirt, his wrists a brush over her sides that just.. _oh_ , she sighs when he helps her roll her hips over him, the friction enough to make her burn. "Have you?"

"'Course," he gasps, a laugh if he could breathe, "yes. We -- I was gon' wait. I was going to," and he doesn't sound apologetic, doesn't sound regretful for taking her honor or virtue or heart, he sounds just short of gentle, her cheek soft when he reaches up, the way he traces her lower lip everything tender.

"For what?"

"I don't know," he admits, but then he sounds sorry. "It could have been nicer for you, I guess. That might've been nice."

"It _was_ nice," she startles. Annoyance is starting to bite into her voice because it had been _perfect_ , better than all those stupid, girlish fantasies about lace and beddings or spur of the moment passionate falls into fluffy beds. "It was, so don't ruin it."

"How's that ruining it? I'm -- _ouch, Arya_ \-- only saying it could have been.. well, nicer in a bed at most. Wouldn't you have liked that?"

She thinks of how his face looked when she told him she hadn't remembered, and it's so quiet. "No," she murmurs, letting her hands scant up to his chest again. She traces the lines and the planes of him, feels him start to tremble slightly, and then she just says it, "no featherbeds for us," like they're.. they're somewhere caught between then and now with her hair spilling over her shoulders, the frayed hem of her tunic in his hands. "This is nice."

"It was," he repeats, earlier and _them_ and the rumble of his words in his chest, her breath caught in her shirt when his eyes ask and his fingers do. "Nothing between us," he marvels, sacrilegious reverence as cloth whispers against the floor and he pulls her down.

They're skin on skin before they're kissing; she palms his chest and his fingers span up her back and tangle through her hair, kiss all the skin he can reach with his hands, and her lips part, her tongue draws him in. Except she starts to laugh, a snicker of nothing that makes her cackle when she misses his lips and kisses his teeth. "You're grinning," against her throat when he curves his hands gently around her breasts, brushes his thumbs over her nipples so she arches and gasps and rubs her center over him in the way she _knows_ just.. " _Gendry_."

"What?"

"Could be nice," she mumbles just as rough, her sigh bleeding into a whine when he squeezes her tit and bucks up against how warm she is clothed over him. "A bed." She's got his breath and his heart in one hand, the ties of his breeches in the other, but she reaches her slick hand up to cup her breast, her palm against the sensitive bud of her pert nipple turning her shiver to a moan. "Do you.. do you want to?" And gods, she's the one that sounds shy as she closes her hand from her heart to rest over his.

She's always had it, and he pushes himself up so they're both sitting, hearts all pressed together and her knees squeezing around him. He assents with a kiss, because _yes, of course, I love you so much,_ all these words pouring out of him and twining with his arms curled around her back.

It all burns bright and hot like the coals, her silver eyes then. "Like this?"

"If you want to," he whispers, gasping when her pretty mouth slants to his neck and kisses down his shoulder.

He shifts his hips, tries to get that blinding friction she's writhing with, but all at once she's gone still and makes a crying sound into his collarbones. "I can't get them off like this," she whines, taking a slow breath that isn't embarrassed or.. well, she smacks him.

"I can't either," he smiles, sheepish and so sweet, and they're another half-second before they're clumsy and fumbling with both their breeches and he's laughing into her hair and almost hitting his head on the ceiling.

They fit and fall back together almost as one, an eased confidence they haven't yet settled into, but she straddles herself back over his lap, and he spreads her with his fingers and hears her shiver meld into his groans when she scrapes her nails over his chest.

Then they're _oh_ , gods, so much breathless laughter, so much _yes_.

\- -- - -- -

"What's that face?"

"What face?" She frowns. She _grins_ , her grey eyes smiling at Sarra reflected in her vanity mirror.

"You're scaring me, you know," she smiles idly, and seven hells, will milady wear green or blue today? "Is it still the smith?"

But all at once, being asked to shrug off her dirty tunic, maybe they didn't -- no one needed to know it was _Gendry_. Right? "What smith," she wants to know coyly, not stupid but smart.

Sarra just gives her a look. "The one making you grin like that."

And he is, because _oh_ , gods, it's like she could still feel him inside her, could still feel the slight burn that had filled her with how good he felt quicker and harder like he'd asked since it was torture, _delicious_ torture that met them so slow and so burning together. Until they'd tangled and twisted and _harder_ and she might've screamed.

She realizes now with a stupid grin that he'd actually _fucked_ her all primal and hot, and gods.

"What's moon tea taste like?"

There's enough time to pretend she misspoke when Sarra chokes and gapes at her. And then laughs. And then turns a dead pallor of white and presses her hand to her forehead. "Why not tell me after your brother leaves?"

"Why?" she shrugs, unpinning her hair from the mess she'd piled it into.

"What if it comes out? You know I'm not good at keeping secrets."

"No, but you're good at keeping _my_ secrets, and I know the important ones will follow you to the grave." Or else.

Not truly.

After all, when they were children, Robb lived three years never knowing his favorite wooden soldier was hidden away behind a rafter in that bloody broken tower. It was probably still there, too.

Gods.

"Why do you think I know how it tastes anyway?" But Arya sees through that nonchalance look of oblivious innocence easily, and she snickers when her squire snorts at her own allusion. "I _do_ , but still," Sarra remedies. She takes up the ornate brush that had been a gift from Sansa, starts brushing through the brown hair that reeks of smith.

Surprisingly, even to herself, Arya doesn't fight it. She sits there and bites at her lip and tries to work with how much she doesn't care. "..Was it that boy?"

"The one who left?" Her squire smiles and laughs, but her smile is sad for a fleeting moment and her laugh too bright. "It was."

" _Just_ him?" she almost doesn't ask.

"I thought you didn't want to gossip men with me."

"Just mine," she shrugs nonchalantly, glancing away from the mirror.

There's a pause likely filled with a lot, but not as secret as she'd have guessed, Sarra just states it. "Not just him."

"But didn't you both promise your lives to each other?"

"Arya, that doesn't mean much."

"Of course it does," she contradicts like Sarra's stupid, but maybe there's just a sad truth, a shell of heartbreak melded whole from years ago.

"Not anymore. Not for us," she grins, like it's nothing, but who knows when it comes to women? "Besides, I can't wait forever, can I?"

She can't answer right away because no, she wouldn't wait forever either. Not unless it was for Gendry. "If it's worth it," she decides after a bit.

"I don't know that." She smiles again, softer with her rosy cheeks and blonde hair and everything men love in her, but it's just _more_ when she grins. "I can't know that, so until I do, I'll kiss whoever I want when I feel like it, alright? You'd be wise to do the same."

"I do."

"But just _him_."

And Arya has to roll her eyes at her. "His name is Gendry. You can say it."

"I know his name." She smiles in that prim, self-satisfied way Sansa would and starts to thread a green ribbon through milady's hair. All curled or some shit like that. It really doesn't look awful. "Every girl within two leagues knows his name."

"Sarra," she chides tiredly. Yesterday was perfect, this morning was _perfect_ , and her squire is ruining that lovely memory of  
Gendry's cock. "Gods," she swears. Diversion. One that makes her snort. "Do you remember when you wanted to marry Robb?"

Sarra stares at her, doesn't laugh. "Tell me why you need moon tea."

"You know why." She rolls her eyes to feel annoyed, but _needing_ and thinking and gods, her thighs hurt. She can't stop grinning. It's really getting ridiculous. "Yesterday," is all she says since she's being smirked at.

It must be enough, though, because Sarra plops herself up on the vanity, smooths her dress out neatly where she's sitting on brushes and hair combs and ribbons and the jewelry Arya doesn't use. "And?" she presses, perching her chin in her hand and looking every bit like the cat that ate the songbird. Or every piece of gossip in Winterfell.

"And it.. was nice? It -- stop!" she laughs, flinching off the seat when Sarra swats at her arm. "I'm not just going to tell you about it."

"Was it good?"

"Yes," she confesses before she can help it, and gods, she actually _squeals_. "It was.. oh, gods." All of him and all of her and so much.. oh, gods. Oh, gods. "Sarra," she calls, starting to laugh so happy it's pouring out of her heart. She folds her arms over her chest to hold herself together, but when she reaches for her hair, her squire hastens off the table to stop her hands.

"You'll ruin it," she laughs, just because Arya's still giggling like a crazed woman. "You've gone mad, haven't you? I can maybe bring you some moon tea from the Maester, but I wish you'd waited until _after_ Jon had left to warm the smith's bed. How many times, anyways?"

The once yesterday and then this morning, she'd say, but Sarra's tossing her dresses and searching for shoes and going on about how Jon would just _know_ whatever they were up to with that look he often gives, but Arya isn't mad. She's just more in love than she ever thought she'd be.

Best she doesn't say so, though, not that she knows. Sarra would just ask her when love had ever worked for anyone.

\- -- - -- -

_The sun glitters on the pavement like diamonds, the water from the fountains sparkles like colorful gems and jewels inlaid in gold, and Jon's actually sweating._

_Months in King's Landing by now, and he's finally stopped feeling like he's been burned alive and melted or.. well, no, he feels again like a Targaryen._

_"What was it, then?" Dany asks him. Their currency here is in smiles, and she's trading in her flirtatious quips, he knows, but he's barbed in a smirk until his face starts to turn red and she laughs in that twinkling glee he's heard so much of. "Fate?" like a challenge, her eyes bright like the sun in all these gardens._

_"It wasn't fate." He chuckles and welcomes in this light breeze and how he isn't thinking about anything in particular, how nice that is. "Happenstance, maybe," he decides while she laughs. He can understand now why the man she was telling him about traveled across all Westeros to make her smile. "Happenstance or excitement. Or lots of wine," he adds, and she chortles so hard her drink comes out her nose._

\- -- - -- -

"Hey," he smiles a slow, almost sad way.

"Hey," she repeats. She's sitting on a barrel overlooking the practice yard, only some young boys playing at practicing swords today while everyone else prepares for their Warden's departure.

"You look happy," he tells her, and when she looks, he does, too. "And you look nice."

She doesn't do anything but slide to her feet, though, leaning against him since she wants to not actually say it if she can help it. Goodbye. Nothing good has ever come of it, it seems, but he wraps his arm around her shoulder lightly, might let this one be a good one.

"I went to see Gendry," he says since she's still quiet, still leaning into him. "He only met my gaze once."

"Mmm," she mumbles noncommittally.

"Rickon should be bringing Lady Shireen back here within the next few days."

"Should."

"I don't have to tell you how to keep Winterfell," he tries. There's a touch of pride on his windburned face, and no, he doesn't.

"You don't," she cracks, her resolve chipped just a little more away. The North would be alright; they'd all be when they weren't worrying for Jon, but if dragons didn't freeze, wolves wouldn't thaw, and Starks would stay in the North. "Just come back soon," like she's almost begging, turns so she's hugging Jon back.

"I will," he swears.

She squeezes her arms around him like they're nine odd years younger, tries to sound as threatening as she can. "Don't do anything stupid either."

"Like what?" he almost laughs, stilling his fingers from mussing through her hair.

"Don't marry the Queen." It's almost a joke. Almost.

"Don't marry Gendry before I'm back, then," like he could even _bargain_ that since they -- they.

Oh, Gods.

"Jon," she starts, almost considering just telling him the truth of it before her smarts tell her that's a stupid idea. "..Just come back, alright? You got to."

"Have to," he corrects gently, promises, and he kisses her hair, and there really isn't much left to say.

She could tell him her plans for innovation and a wider relationship with the people, and he could tell her he's certain she'd be a better ruler than he'd ever be. He wasn't born to it, after all, not as a Stark, but she was always the one that wanted to be the Warrior Queen Nymeria. He could tell her to look after her direwolf when she fancies returning back to the Keep, and he could remind her to keep Knife fed since he usually has to, or he could tell her Ygritte, _her name was Ygritte and you'd have loved her_ , and she could tell him that maybe he was right, that being someone's lady wasn't absolutely dreadful.

He could tell her that word of her lady mother was spreading, and she might remind him to cut his hair before all the pretentious prats at Court laugh him away, but there still isn't much to really say. There's a look, their grey eyes so pale, and it says most of what they can't. No goodbyes in the end, just an _I love you, little sister_ and her apology for deciding to not be there when he actually departs.

She'd rather not watch him go, but she'll keep looking to see him return, and they just remain standing there for a little while longer.

It's nice here, grey skies rolling on, a day that is everything House Stark connotes, but winter isn't coming. Summer is, and Jon takes just a bit of it with him when he goes with Ghost trotting beside him and banners that are all grey.

For a second she thinks of running after the procession she doesn't really care about, all the gathering waving and tittering and a bunch of nonsense since Jon isn't their older brother, but she stands there and waves, too, let's the wind tousle through her hair ontop of that damned tower just so she can see Jon for as long as she can up here. She doesn't feel the weight of responsibility crush her, though, not yet, but it isn't quite as foreboding as she thought.

It's a new chapter.

Robb's old wooden toy soldier is still hidden in the rafters.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a look into next chapter because I am bunches excited:
> 
>  
> 
> "Arya," he says, and several glance up because she's been _Lady Stark_ and _my lady_ all night. "You can't do that."
> 
> "Says you," she scoffs, a disbelieving stare he knows would be followed by a smack to his shoulder if they were anywhere but here.
> 
> "Yes, I say it."
> 
> "Gendry," Rickon warns quietly. 
> 
> Several of the lords are giving him odd looks, the castellan especially, but Gendry just speaks louder, tries to bite the anger and annoyance away with a clench of his fists. "It's a reckless and stupid errand."
> 
> "An _errand_? That's what you'd call it?"
> 
> "What would you?"
> 
> "Justice," she tells him, and he doesn't like the taste of it when he repeats it to himself, doesn't like the way it shades her eyes like that.
> 
> "I think you mean vengeance," he says cooly, because he remembers her lady mother and her lifeless eyes and the parts of the country she turned into a graveyard.
> 
> She shrugs just so, but of course, there isn't a difference to her. She hasn't seen Needle stained crimson in too long. "He challenged Jon's claim to the North."
> 
> "Milady," Maester interrupts. He stops just as quick as Gendry raises a hand, though, and blinks at the smith when his palm hits the top of the table.
> 
> "He asked a _question_ , Arya. Not everyone's trying to slight you."
> 
> "This is about Jon."
> 
> "Isn't."


	36. And Some Will Fake It

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Mercy," they say the girl said._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> _They say Sandor Clegane is alive, too._

It's not like she wanted Jon away.

She really didn't.

She isn't some spare of a well-bred lordling waiting and waiting in the drudgery of suspense to see if the elder brother throws himself from his horse in a tragic accident. All those years of suppressed hatred and blatant disregard and it's a horse instead of a scandalously patched up explanation why such a good young man recently come into manning his father's hold is now frozen dead in his sleep. Such a shame. Or it would be, y'know, if that were the case.

She isn't even on Bear Island with more sisters and a claim to titles and prestige just like they do, equal in most parts until she's sure jealousy would want the elder sibling gone away. Like in some Southron houses where the women still are the lords by their own shod circumstance and precious shortcomings. How unfortunate to not find of be desirable enough to a husband when the glittering alternative is a castle in the marshes or the trees or the sand.

"You've put a lot of thought into this, haven't you," Gendry tells her warily, definitely not a question. He smiles like she's something precious, though, and maybe she's been talking about it all morning in the kitchens since why _not_ enjoy breakfast twice if it's supposed to be the most vital part of the day?

They'll be in the dining hall in little more than an hour so she can observe how the first meal with Jon away goes, smooth or bumpy, but it isn't special really. Supper last night without him was fine, but she received more prayers for Jon's quick return than she did bows and reverent nods. That suits her just fine, though. She doesn't want to be kneeled before.

"Imagining the ways Bran could have overthrown Robb to become King instead is fascinating," she says, grinning around a bite of her toast.

He just stares at her, though, watches her shovel food into her mouth and eat and eat and still take whatever she wants from his plate as it pleases her, but he knows the older maid over the far stove will bring them more breakfast, 'cause _isn't it sweet how our Arya always makes friends out of everyone?_

"Friends," Arya had sneered, and he had to pat her back because she laugh-choked on his tea.

"Happy I don't have to fight a brother for a crown," he mumbles, just a little bit of snark. But just to get her talking. He likes hearing her talk about her family like they're people and not just memories.

She gives him a look, almost challenging before she smiles and cuts into her cream cake. "Bran would have beaten him in a duel, I think."

"Do you? Aren't religious guys opposed to violence?"

"No. Well, yeah, but no." She shakes her head, sounds almost proud, "He'd have been a knight. Best there'd be like Ser Arthur Dayne but with Ice. Or a spear."

"Of course," he agrees shortly. He eventually just pushes his plate towards her since he isn't hungry much anyways, but that makes her so happy she sounds like she's moaning into the bite of greased bacon she's stolen. She touches his knee in thanks before asking him to ask Rickon a question whenever he misses her enough to come back, and his mug of tea's ended up in front of her instead of at his side and away from her somehow, and "Yeah," he shrugs. "What is it?" Barely anyone's in here as it is, so he just sorta.. gazes. He's watching this wonder of a woman, and his heart's so far gone.

"About cannibalism," she tells him. She gives him a look that might be seductive if he were breathing, but she grins and he tries to forget it.

It really isn't like she wanted Jon away.

It's just that Gendry has to miss actual breakfast in the dining hall since he has to meet some man about something at the forge, so she's walking alone through the courtyard, through the halls, through the grand doorway. Her gown is dark grey, the dress made for Sansa only she decided she looked better in gold and green brocade, so it's hers now, and it isn't awful if she's being honest.

She likes this.

The castellan asked her about council, and she likes this.

She wants Jon to come back, she does, but the sky is especially grey today, and Winterfell is entirely hers in this moment, and she feels her father and her mother and Robb and Bran. Like ice in her veins or the summer snow weeks ago, she feels Winterfell, and it's all hers. It's a difference.

\- -- - -- -

Jon never liked being away.

Not when he was going to the Wall, but then he'd been blinded by youth and how he'd be his own man and not the Stark he wasn't. Freedom and honor and the valor so many paid for with their lives.

It wasn't glory then, and it certainly shouldn't be now. Damn.

Not even a full day and he misses Winterfell. He wants the people and Rickon prowling about, Sansa penning her letters with her soft humming, Arya. He'd muss through her hair and ask her about her morning and feed Knife.

He wouldn't be heading for the Kingsroad and the world he didn't want a part of. Or maybe did. It's been seven fucking hours in this box; he doesn't know.

\- -- - -- -

Sansa sits on a cushioned chair in Highgarden's awning of roses, so many colors and so many fragrant aromas making all of this heavenly, and it isn't at all like King's Landing used to be. The air isn't heavy and muggy, it's light and flowery and wonderful and perfect for the little lord or lady growing strong inside her.

"If it's a girl, Willas says Highgarden will be hers," she says, just as light as the wind, her voice carrying her relaxed tone with the soft notes of her husband's humming paces away where he tends to all these roses.

"About damned time," Olenna scoffs from across from her, her eyes not bothering to open on this fine spring morning. "It only took seven odd generations of these fools. Go ahead and elevate your feet, dear."

She's motherly and kind and dotes on her like Margaery sometimes does, but maybe that's just so she isn't the maiden of glass stowed all pretty on a top shelf. Willas is the only one here that won't treat her as something fragile, but while she doesn't want to credit him for making her so strong since Arya would sneer and their lady mother might smile without her eyes since she was always iron and steel -- Sansa was, too.

And she does miss her mother. And Arya.

Only a couple months in Highgarden, but oh, isn't life just lovely here?

\- -- - -- -

It's been a couple days.

Rickon wasn't more than a day and a half behind Shireen's party, anyways, but after initially sneaking into the tent he assumed was hers, well, he'd nearly gotten himself stabbed by the short-fingered man but convinced him that it'd be just fine to stay out here, too.

So they have, and he's covered in dirt stains and has yet to pick all the leaves from Shaggy's fur, has ridden him out past the creek to find the red berries Shireen fancies. He brings them to her all wrapped in a leaf for breakfast, only eating thirteen of them on the way, his heels urging Shaggy to head back towards camp.

He doesn't really know what he's doing here. He just knows it's like, Shireen. That's it.

"You're kind," she tells him, has almost everyday.

She doesn't sound patronizing, though. She doesn't sound sarcastic either. It's just that she means it, that he is, and since she no longer sounds disbelieving, it's proven true that genuinity resides with sincerity and the honesty that's usually crueler to her.

It isn't life, however, not her life, and she's told him various times. She believes that there's more to it, claims it vehemently, doesn't have a mirror unpacked so she can't see the red seeds berries sucked into her teeth.

If she did have a mirror, she'd probably frown, but he'd just tell her again that she's beautiful.

"You can ride Shaggy, if you want," he'd told her yesterday. Just a little while before they'd set back for Winterfell, 'cause it is sorta nice here in the middle of nothing.

"I think I'll stick with my books," she smiled, all polite and cautious.

"It's more exciting than that book."

"Is not," she told him, obviously affronted. "Nothing's better than a book."

He'd goaded her into at least trying, though, since Shaggy liked her and she adored him, yet she made him promise that they'd take a slow turn around the forest. And he kept his word for a second, Shaggy was walking slowly with Shireen's hands fierce in his fur to hold on since it wasn't a surprise, wasn't, when Rickon clicked his tongue and spurred the direwolf into a sprint.

Her shout echoed into the trees as she was carried in that run, and the mere seconds ticked by like hours to her with her face all red, her breaths too hard. She collapsed off Shaggydog's back and onto the ground in a heap, her eyes like knives while he just grinned at her.

She ranted on and on, raved; he was only paying half attention. She used his full name in her rage, but that's when he reached for her, pressed his hand beneath her left breast and up. Her heartbeat was thudding heavy against his hand, innocent somehow, 'cept she was frozen and gaping and so embarrassed she could probably die, but he just laughed and nodded at her chest like it's normal, like _all_ of this is with him the young wolfblood more earnest and true than anyone she knows and her the prim, bookish maiden that keeps the wolves from howling some nights so the moon can.

"Rickon," she starts, low, warning.

"Your books can't make your heart beat that fast," he states. And then grins with all his teeth and drops his hand from her teat and plans for Winterfell.

\- -- - -- -

Moon tea doesn't taste as bad as she thought it would.

She's got it in a flask Sarra had gotten for her from the Maester.

"He thinks it's for me," she shrugged. She gets her tea from an older woman in town, though. "Whenever you need it, just tell me you need to pray. I'll know what it means." Her look is too smug, her eyes too laughing at her in how clever she is, and Arya's quickly banished her from her rooms tonight. Not without a quick thanks.

Still. Moon tea doesn't taste as bad as she thought it would.

Gendry doesn't say anything when she tells him. He just joins her in front of the fire in the backroom of the smithy, on the rug where she likes to sit with him at her back and his arms around her just how she likes. He likes, all warm with his nose in her hair, his stubble rasping along the skin of her soft shoulder. And he just holds her.

"I hope it doesn't hurt you," he finally mumbles lowly when most of it seems to be gone. Her hair keeps tickling his nose, and each breath she takes relaxes his lungs so they're a rhythm until she laughs.

"It doesn't." She nuzzles into his chest, turns her head so they're closer face to face with the comfort of being together and _here_ and wrapped in each other more wholesome. It's getting harder to be away from here too long as it is. "Doesn't really feel like anything, don't worry."

"How much do you have?"

"As much as we'll need," she says, her's grin so audible that he has to realize his question sounded more brazen than he meant, but her short, bubbly laugh is sticking to her throat. She doesn't mean to say it, "Hopefully a lot," with her eyes giggling and her cheeks pink, but it's out there like he hadn't meant to ask how many times they could, uh. _Oh_.

"Hopefully," he whispers, with maybe just a touch of want in the seriousness. She shifts to get more comfortable, draws up her knees so they're hitting his on both her sides, but that little squirm she does just brushes her backside against his front. All at once it's too much and nowhere near enough since he's barely over twenty and has seen her naked in his mind ever after he was sixteen, but thoughts aren't as good as the flesh, and he's had it, and he's hard-pressed to stop touching her skin now.

"Hopefully," she repeats, a quiet, thoughtful hum that's all too innocent, so much girl. "The septa always said moon tea was for whores."

"That's not --" _She's not_ , but no. "Not everyone can afford a babe. Or wants one," he responds, a little too gruff. Some fucking people just don't need to have any children, but she reaches her arm up, curls it behind her and him to tangle through his hair soothingly.

"She would say girls that took their hands between their legs were whorish, too."

"Arya," he sighs. And quicker when she bends her arm and barely just touches his knee. "You're not. It isn't like that." But she laughs, and gods, he loves the sound even if it means she doesn't believe him when he's serious. "I mean it."

"Some whores are impressive people," she teases. Partially. She's thinking of Braavos, but he's thinking of that foolish girl at that inn, the one he never even spoke to but still had Arya riled up months later.

Peaches and acorns. R'hllor.

She twists a little bit, shifts her legs and her arse not so subconsciously over his lap so she's turned sideways in his arms like some sort of bride. Her arms around his neck, they're close, and she's gazing at his lips a little too long, watches how his mouth slowly lilts up to the smile he's trying to fight.

"Have you?" he nearly doesn't ask, so soft into her forehead, nearly silent over the sounds of the fire.

"Have I what?" He doesn't answer her, though, but she can feel his face getting hot, his hand hotter where he's holding her hip and has his arm laid over her thighs, and _oh_ , she grins. "I do. Did," she corrects like it's obvious, but just because his breath's caught and he's pressing harder into her hip, she corrects it a bit. "Before we were laying together."

"Arya."

And she kisses him.

Hard and quick, her hand cupping his neck and her fingers twisting through his hair, and she's fire and pushing into him roughly and it's all the restraint he's held since that first time he wanted to hold her hand and stopped himself, everything soft with the barest of his touch to her cheek as he warms to her slowly, coaxes her mouth gentle.

He tastes sweet, and she was right, that tea doesn't taste half so bad as he figured it would, but he brushes his tongue against her bottom lip softly and doesn't claim her mouth when she parts it to him. It's slow, and it's burning, and he draws back when she feels like she's starting to melt into him, draws that whine from her throat when she doesn't even open her eyes and just tilts her head up for another kiss.

"You should eat something," he says, his voice low.

Her eyes flash open, and she's so pretty like that, bright grey and flushed cheeks gone from breathless to angry. "You kiss me like that, and then you mention that?" She's affronted and then hits his shoulder, but then all at once she's dreading and "It wasn't bad, was it?"

And she's so stupid. "No," he tells her, his smile just taking most her soul. "It wasn't. But you should probably eat something with that tea since you came here for lunch, and I'm late to get back to work as it is."

And he won't.. uh. Not on the forge floor.

\- -- - -- -

Sansa's sitting with her feet propped up in Margaery's lap. The toils of being pregnant, the joys of being pregnant, and her good-sister is rubbing her feet and soaking them with oils and telling her all the ways they'll entertain themselves with amusement when Sansa's sworn to bedrest for the health of the little lord or lady that shall be heir to Highgarden.

"I hope it's a girl," she chatters relentlessly. "If it's a girl, she'll be far prettier than Grandmother used to be."

"Used to?" Sansa can't help but quip. One didn't insult Olenna Tyrell lightly.

If it was a boy, though, Marg might have foreseen how he'd be even prettier than Loras, a rose and nothing else, but Margaery didn't like to dote on grief yet composed it remarkably well. At least -- until the Lannister bastard children were brought up, then she didn't know who to grieve for.

"She'll be an astounding horsewoman," her good-sister says decidedly.

"Or he'll be a better garden keeper than Willas," Sansa smiles. But then -- Marg digs her knuckles into the heel of her foot, and oh, if that didn't just release all the pressure that was starting to tense Sansa's back. The sound she makes is like when Willas kisses her throat or when she takes the first few bites out of a lemoncake.

"Sansa," she laughs, giggles in that charming way she always had.

But the Lady of Highgarden just remembers something she'd long forgotten. Arya had walked through the gates of Winterfell without anyone detecting her, the first time in years, but when they were all as caught up as they could be and they'd remembered what they'd lost, her sister had at least taken a bath somewhere before coming back (not like she cared much, to be honest). She just hadn't taken care of her feet.

They were cracked and dry, rough and callused, worse than even Rickon's were, and Sansa had held them tenderly. She could have kissed them. Everyday she'd massaged lotions and oils into Arya's feet, mostly her heels, and everyday they sat in silence until they were strangers become sisters again.

It makes her want to cry, and it isn't just her pregnancy.

\- -- - -- -

Jon looks out his window. Everything has gone grey.

Fields, clouds, the rest of the sky stretching on and on. It's colorless and winter come again, and for a second he frets the next winter and if it'd mean all the same horrors of the last.

Except the landscape he sees connects thoughts and memories and words, and he's just a boy again, and he can't stop laughing. He sees it all at once, thirteen year old Robb and little Arya in a memory playing out of his spinning brain like he's living flesh come back just to watch him choke on his laughter.

"I don't understand Theon," Arya had whined, ~~_Theon_~~ , and she she rhythmically tapped the flat-edge arrow Robb had shaped for her against her knees.

And it happened so quick, Robb firing him a quick concerned look. He never did like the influence he had on Arya when she was young, but he still fancied it more than Lady Catelyn disliked how close she was with the boy that was less a son than a ward.

"You're not to listen to anything he says," Robb told her. His cheeks were fighting a smile, half as red as his hair.

"I don't understand," she repeated. It was so grey out, so miserable since she didn't understand and would make life hell until she did.

"Use your words."

"He said --!" she had started, working herself up to a fret. Not even eight yet, but she was the picture of a lady sitting there all helpless and fuming, chiding and pretty even with scabs on her elbows and knees. "Girls," she muttered without an ounce of seconds ago's vigor, as if that explained it all.

"Arya," Robb had warned, since he was _that age_ and only ever heard and knew too much about ~~_Theon_~~ and his discovery of taverns. "Don't mind what he says. Especially if it isn't said to you."

"I wasn't listening in on him! I just didn't want to interrupt his talk is all. That'd've been rude."

"Uh huh." He'd went over to tousle through her wild locks, but she'd shoved him away petulantly until it all just got to be too much.

"Jon!" she half-cried, "it isn't true, is it?" Seeing his puzzled, exasperated face, she'd quickened on. "If all girls are good for is beneath their skirts, then how am I supposed to do anything 'sides needlework and gossiping?"

She looked such a fright, not really getting the meaning (he didn't really either, to be honest) but what it implied, and she'd shoved at him again, pleaded with him to tell her if that meant she really couldn't join the Kingsguard.

He's still laughing, 'cause he sees her grey eyes all watery, sees her asking him if she was father's bastard child, too, since they looked so much alike, sees her all those mikes away.

For a second, though -- just a second. He thinks about ~~_Theon_~~. Theon.

He lets himself see his brother as King in the North with Greyjoy on his left, not a traitor but a brother, not asking Jon to just _please kill me_ because his prayers for Robb to were never answered. He stands so proud, and Robb would have given Sansa to Willas and legitimized Jon in person and welcomed Arya back home, accepted the boy she brought with her without any questions.

"A smith?" Theon would have sputtered when he first saw them together. Maybe in the courtyard where Jon had first seen Gendry himself since he'd lost count of how many times he seemed to stumble into Arya there. Always with a quick word and a a smile, but maybe Theon would have seen the two first in the dining hall when Arya would have crept off the dais to sit further back with Gendry and the miller and the other men she wasn't paying attention to.

"Who's that?" he'd have asked, 'cause Arya never acted so besotted for anyone. "The smith?" There wouldn't be a way he'd believe that man was a grimy smith, not when Ros would have spent half her time equating him to how high and mighty kings must be since he wouldn't give her the time of day.

But he'd assure Theon _and_ Robb that Gendry couldn't even forge a spoon.

\- -- - -- -

"Would you have married anyone else?" she asks him, way out of the blue, too over his head, and he has to set down his hammer so the clattering can quiet enough so he can hear her over whatever that is she's eating.

"Would I _what_ now?"

"If you would have stayed in the Riverlands," she shrugs. She's giving him that nonchalant look while she demolishes what's left of the plate of sweets she brought him after dinner, but for a second he's forgotten the question to wonder what she'll taste like with her lips covered in that sugary powder. "Gendry."

"Yeah?" he mumbles stupidly, and she smiles when he smudges black fingerprints over the side of his face. "Marry? You?"

"Would you have married anyone else?"

"In the Riverlands?" He frowns lightly, but as always she's quick to make him smile when she reaches out with her arms, reaches for his skin.

It's been minutes and minutes since she's touched his sides and felt up his arms, and since he's so bare and sweaty and confused, so rugged and appealing, and he's just caving into her hands spots of fire down his ribs. "Eventually, would you have?" she wants to know, sitting there like she isn't making him uncomfortable with pointless questions and how she pulls him so he's against her.

"If I'd stayed with the Brotherhood?"

"If you stayed with them."

Just a moment to think, and he cracks a short laugh when he traces her cheekbone with his knuckles, brushes her hair back and cups her neck. "You'd have stayed," he says surely. "You would have come back or stayed or.. like Wenda," he remembers, chuckling low.

She doesn't even hit him. "If I hadn't?" And she raises both her hands to set on either side of his face, her palms scruffing against his beard absently.

"No one else cares about a blacksmith," he tells her. He smiles into her forehead when he leans down to kiss her, and no, no, her hands are straying too low and he hasn't finished with his work for the night. "Arya --"

"I care," she protests, almost whining before that impossible smile brightens her eyes. "Lots of people do."

He's a gruff _mmh_ since all he cares about is the one in front of him right here. Right here.

\- -- - -- -

"Winterfell," Rickon whispers. He sighs just a little, like Ghost sometimes does since he's gotten slow and old and lazy.

"What was that?" Shireen pipes up. She's half paying attention and half penning something she promises is just a little more important than he is, but he's content enough watching how the lights dance over the shadowed pockmarks in her cheek and wondering how in all seven hells does someone keep their dismembered fingers around their neck.

He's starting to think intently, too. Long-term. His life.

He's never really thought about it 'till now with plans setting them back to Winterfell and Shireen planning for there instead of her own kingdom. Women just give up their everything for husbands, don't they? Their homes, their people, their names.

He doesn't know. This is gonna be more than Sansa teaching him geography.

\- -- - -- -

"You should write to your sister," Gendry says.

Of all the letters Sansa's composed to her in just a couple months, Arya had only written back twice. She'd started to talk about her family more.

"We know Rickon will be back soon, but I know you miss Lady Sansa. And Jon." Even if it'd only been, well, a day. A night.

He's laying there in that bed that seems so much smaller without her in it, and she's.. she's so magnificent. Standing across the small room in a shirt that likely used to be white, sighing at each pin she frees from her hair so it flows loose curl by curl out of the intricate mess her squire had styled for her.

She's told him that tomorrow she's planning to ride somewhere out a little ways away to see how the North's people are faring, and she's already so brilliant at this, he's sure of it.

"Maybe you could write --"

"Arya," and it's Catelyn Stark years ago.

Her daughter's just come in from only the gods know where, her dress tattered and covered in dirt and her knees scraped and a grin so bright that she felt guilty when that glee turned to childish fear.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she burst out quickly, wilting under her mum's disappointed gaze. All she knew was this dress was important, and most of it was caught in brambles and that tree by the pond and -- in the middle of all her seven year old explanations, she gets so quiet 'cause her mother's looking at her like she might.. well, she didn't know, but Catelyn wasn't looking at her daughter like she wished she were the other.

Close to tears, both of them because so much heart was flooding up into her mum's eyes when she reached down to embrace her. Catelyn held her close and it was almost apologetic, and she wasn't reprimanded that night. Or any day in the following few weeks.

\- -- - -- -

_It was a simple question. Mayhaps more just like an observation. The North would follow the Warden (King) in the North whose name is Stark._

_It'll be days like these when Jon is more like Aemon and Gendry is more like Rhaegar and Arya, she -- a daughter of the North for true, but a few of the men remember their ranks when Lady Catelyn was their Lady and a single look from her could silence their army. Arya's always been more her mother than she ever thought._

_And maybe that's the problem now, all these days later. She told Gendry how the Lady Stoneheart was going to kill Jaime Lannister. He didn't tease her about wanting him dead then, he just listened, and this story was different than when she told him what Jon told her about the Queen wanting the Kingslayer killed. Not even Tyrion could change her mind, but Jon told her Ser Jaime looked like a man resigned to death but not the least like he welcomed it._

_It was Brienne of Tarth that spoke up on his behalf since half the room wouldn't, and with Oathkeeper in her hands and more than a few of the congregation willing to fight for her, she'd merely asked the Queen not to. Jon said she told Daenerys that she loves Ser Jaime, and they'd both been pardoned._

_It was all very sweet until even after finding Sansa, Lady Stoneheart still wanted to execute him._

_But that -- it -- doesn't matter._

_That Thenn questioned his liege lord's right to Winterfell as far as she knew, and she'd killed Harrion Karstark for less._

_Or not. Treason's treason, and the skies are so grey, and even though it's been days, Gendry was right. The man was just asking a question, or maybe he wasn't, but Bran would see him return safely to Alys, or maybe he wouldn't._

_The future is always changing._

_\- -- - -- -_

_"Mercy," they say the girl said._

__There wasn't anything glorious about it. The dead of night, blood black in the night, and family was all they wanted, anyways._ _

_They say Sandor Clegane is still alive, too._


	37. Just

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Only five times he almost kissed her might have been serious about it. Not too bad. Not too good, either, really.

"I want to change my answer," he says.

She agrees, but just because she isn't listening.

He's thought a lot about it since then, since she asked if he might have married anyone else if they'd never.. well. If he'd never found her or she'd never came back because she was dead. She just said it with more prose, more of that sparkle he missed lighting her eyes with that cheery laugh that's _her_ laugh from years ago when the road was darker and life more solemn and hopeless but still tied them both here with her hands flat to his bare chest and her eyes closed in such a peace here amidst the wolfwood trees that it's bloody ridiculous.

All he's thinking about is when she stood and stripped and laid beneath him on that ratty old cloak with her skin pink and her legs spread and -- he tightens his arm around her waist, pulls her close enough that his stubble can rasp against her forehead when he shifts them just a bit.

"What?" she finally asks, sharp, and he can feel that little hitch of her breath in her ribs.

"When you asked if I'd marry anyone else."

"Come up with someone else then?" she teases, almost, but they're not too far from where she got the stupid idea he'd want anyone but her.

"No," he assures her softly, "no one else, that's it. I don't think there'd be anyone, really. I never thought about it."

"I don't believe that," she _pfft_ 's, and just like he knows when to tug her closer to him, he knows when to let her loose.

"You would have, mayhaps," he decides. His mouth quirks with the shell of a grin, and it's back when they were younger and it was _m'lady_ that and _m'lady_ this and mayhaps a few things he shouldn't have wanted to do to his m'lady. "I was going to kiss you."

The first time he ever really might have considered it for true might have been at the Peach.

She'd just made him so damned _angry_.

So mad he wanted to kiss her for it, but he was warm full of drink and the strucken thought that her lips were looking fuller and her breasts more shapely and standing there, confused and hurt and cursing him for stupid and misunderstanding him when he did know the truth of it, just felt weighed down by resentment and how it must really work and all those things too heavy for him to hold instead of her, and gods, when she'd actually placed her hands on her hips then. Because she _had_ hips then, just a girl with a woman's defiance and appeal and hurt all over again because she knew he knew she hadn't meant it like that.

He did understand that. He just wanted to kiss her once, maybe, 'cause he for true was no brother of hers.

And then once in Harrenhal. Before the Peach, before the Acorn Hall, but they'd actually survived and started to live and being an apprentice was familiar to him. She wasn't the brought up lady she was meant to be, he guessed, but he knew she was treated decent and fed better than he was and slow but sure, all those prayers to whoever'd listen had her skin turning less pale and her bones less prominent where she was so thin. She was starting to look healthy. Not happy, not always, but "I don't have much time," she'd say hurriedly, always so quick with how she came and went, a winter breeze that always reminded him to start smithing with a tunic since she was starting to stare.

It wasn't proper. Wasn't fitting.

She didn't have much time, but she chose to spend what little of it she had to spare with _him_ , and that unbidden feeling kept rooting in his chest and cracking beneath his ribs and nestling in that spot his heart probably was.

"What are you making?" she asked, curious and curiouser, damned nosey.

He held up a simple hinge so she could see, nothing brilliant, and she'd started to frown just because he was. "Don't get too near there, it's hot," he warned. Even then, she'd started to perch herself on anvils, and life just -- it just makes him laugh.

Outloud in this field of dry earth surrounded by all these reddening leaves and her bemused look, years and years later to right now. He skims the back of her tunic up just to feel the barest touch of her soft skin and how she bites that tremor with her teeth on her lip, because how can he not be touching her?

She'd forgotten (more like ignored) his warning to not get too close to that piece pulled from the fire mere moments before, set just next to where her patched skirts were dangerously close to what would surely burn her back in that small corner of the forge in Harrenhal.

She ended up touching it by accident, burning the side of her hand in a small spot of pink that stained her skin since she was so careless, so caught up in telling him in hushed tones all about some plan she had that was likely stupid.

Or it was just him 'cause he had no doubt in his mind he'd go along with it.

"Riverrun," he remembered saying, not missing the flicker of hope that caught in her eyes before she hissed and cradled her hurt hand to her chest.

"Let me see," he demanded since she was stupid and careless and used to just about anything but being burned, and he couldn't even spare her from that. She was still careless, though, and he'd brushed his thumb over the faint burn to see that it wasn't bad at all, would be fine it likely a day or six, but it hits him all over again how used she's gotten to the side of submission he still doesn't quite expect since she's so fearsome and bends him to her will with just a look.

She's so fierce, but she's grown so used to the terrors of the world she shouldn't even know about, manages to smile the tiniest bit because he's so soft, isn't he? Not the intimidating bull-headed boy that frightened the others enough to keep them away.

"Riverrun," she said again, looking so hopeful, so certain this crazy scheme of hers was sure to succeed, and he was still holding onto her hand.

Since she was sitting on that anvil and no one'd fussed at her to set down, he could just.. have leaned forward. Aimed a bit down. He could have kissed her. Couldn't, but he drew her hand up with a kiss almost set to her palm since it was likely as close as he'd dared to get, chaste and unbidden and a secret, but -- no. That hadn't been right either.

He kissed the back of her hand, proper but pretentious, maybe, and he'd called her m'lady, told her to mind herself enough to be more careful next time. More gruff than he'd have liked, but he still figures he was miffed at himself.

And then when they'd escaped, and they were free for what felt like the first time since they'd met, maybe even before, the thought of kissing her wasn't too far from his mind though he'd convinced himself he didn't want that, it was just that she was a girl and he didn't know any (many, but he'd seen Pia, and no, thank you very kindly, no), but he knew he was full of shite, so it wasn't really a delusion.

He considered it for a second, here in all those trees and each step towards what was this river that was supposedly a hundred feet wide, and blinked it all away. He was reaching for her hand, still -- he'd just steeled himself the instant Hot Pie hastened back to them from wherever he'd relieved himself to.

But in Acorn Hall, and even now, he'll figure out soon enough that playful touches to her hips, the backs of her knees, the soles of her feet turn her breathless laughs into sweet gasps that sing like steel and burn him red and melt the silver of her eyes.

"You even smell nice," he teased, but the dress didn't look right on her.

Except it did.

It was strange.

Stranger still when their legs tangled, when her fists flew as light as her laughs and her malice and the tear from her left eye a giggle had torn from her, and the second there was a breath of stillness, just her small hands in his fists and his knee between hers and her chest heaving and her breaths hard and his vision hazy and he could have kissed her.

He thinks she probably would have let him.

The floor was warm, _she_ was warm, and it took a second to realize her dress was torn as a piece of it lay abandoned by them and the leather cord that tied her hair, but it wasn't until she flipped him, knocked the air out of his lungs, shoved and kicked him to match it before storming off in all the righteousness of a flushed, disheveled girl that had that mischievous glint in her eyes he hadn't seen in _weeks_ that it probably made sense.

He was starting to love her, just the North couldn't be held.

And then she paid all that attention to the prat Edric Dayne. _Lord_ Edric Dayne with his joyful smile and his eyes purple in certain lights and his hands not really scarred or burned at all. All he does is stare at her in that dress. All any of them do is stare at her, and if he's the only one that cares enough for what ought to be proper and right and _legitimate_ , then.. he doesn't know. He's stupid. She always says he is.

He doesn't much like the taste of ale, but he drinks it, and Arya's actually laughing at something Ned had said to her.

He shouldn't be so mad. Probably doesn't have a right to be.

But he thought about kissing her. Half-considers it since she followed him out to sulk, just like the Peach all damned over again, but he smiled instead of lowering his eyes like he did then, and she wrinkles her nose when he offers her the mug.

"You're a bastard when you drink," she told him pointedly, obviously, and he had half a mind to kiss her again, but he shrugged. He knew.

Only five times he almost kissed her might have been serious about it. Not too bad. Not too good, either, really.

It's her who can't stop laughing now, breathless in all this earth because _you're so stupid_ she quips, as loving as ever, and she's not wrong.

"I know," he admits, pulling her close again because they fit, they fit, the backs of her knees and the crook of his elbow and her head tucked beneath his chin.

They fit, and they live, and it's relaxed and eased this morning here with the Godswood trees and her last bit of solace since riders spotted Rickon (they call him the Young Wolf now) and a pack of travelers maybe just a couple hours away. It's the day she planned to ride just out not too far to a town bordering the far stretch of land east of Winterfell, and small region by region, she's meaning to see the people are content and safe and taken care of, and he wonders if the people will start to call her valiant or gentle or amenable or compassionate or anything else she is and will be as likely a better lord already than half.

No one's paid much attention to where they've been or haven't been and don't seem to much care that he's with her, but the minutes all go by quick until they're hours and the courtyard full of people bustling and hurrying about so full of color and life and excitement.

"I won't be long," she promises. Her horse is waiting with a small group of people she trusts because someone or another insisted she not ride alone -- yet he'd refused to go with her simply because there's actual work to be done, he scoffs and teases, a jape because it's a few hours but he's already missing her making his work harder. "Just a couple hours," and still no one's paying any mind to them.

A girl rushing past actually said something about wondering if Lord Rickon's gotten any more handsome these few days.

Seven hells.

"Quick," she tells him, a sudden grin as she takes hold of his arm to hold onto him in this flurry of loud and jovial welcome of a soon return, so cheery and excited that it's sweeping her up. "Kiss me."

He pauses just a second, though, 'cause bastard blacksmiths won't be stealing any kisses from princesses, but it pierces his heart just then, how he loves her, and no one's looking when he closes his eyes and tilts her chin up and just does.

It's tender and soft like this morning's dew on the scant blades of grass in the wolfwood, and it lasts all of a breath, but it prickles her chin and roughs it red and the world keeps going and moving and grinning up at him like that as she tells him g'bye for the fourth time here in the courtyard.

So full of life and so excited, and when he steps back just a pace when she does since farewells can't last forever when she'll be back within two long chimes if she rides fast, he calls her stupid, calls her m'lady.

She's already acting like the queen she swears to each of the seven she'd be gods-awful at, but they're just them here, so what's it matter, anyways? Her nose is red from the bit of cold, her smile stretched so wide across her face that he can't help but grin back at her like the silly children they probably still are somedays.

That doesn't much matter either.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter was going to have a plot and things, but it'll just have to wait because I was overtaken by the urge to write this bit of fluff tonight because Gendry and Arya, so enjoy! xx, and stay tuned!


	38. For Now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And he doesn't really even think about it when she asks too resolved to be timid, "Stay with me today," with a flash of her eyes up to look at him, just pure silver and how they haven't quite settled into themselves yet. 
> 
> One day she could be more grand and more magnificent, as beloved as a queen and just as commanding surrounded by ice and her quick wit, her quicker resolve when it comes to a sword and how easy it is for her to fight those wars she's always fighting. She could live a thousand days of her grace and fire in her veins, and she'd be the one to resound and reform and renew again everything those lords and ladies could have broken. 
> 
> And he could be anything, maybe grow a beard, maybe have his children inherit a kingdom, perhaps just keep doing this without all the torment that's a kick into his lungs and her hollow eyes and the faces in the past still catching up to them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For DrHolland.

"That's the one I was telling you about," Lady Shireen says.

He's heard the shouts of _Rickon! Lord Stark! Baratheon colors!_ for the past two hours, has tried to ignore it for another while faces piled with amounting excitement catching through the chilled air, and all he did was catch Rickon's eye from across the courtyard. He was standing there grinning with his direwolf by his side and a host of Baratheon men, and for a second -- Gendry wonders how their lord is handling Shireen's absence when he must be suffering the loss of her brilliance, he's sure of it, but the thought is sudden and strange, and he snorts at the sky when he looks to it and remembers that Lord in the Stormland's is half his brother.

It's too early in the morning for this, as close to midday as it is, but no, it was too early in the day hours ago when Arya fret and fussed about. Gone to a neighboring town to see how the people fare under their lord's protection, and she worked herself up so frightfully in the way doubt started to color her cheeks and stress at her hair, he'd laughed when he told her to _come here_.

He had to braid her hair again since she'd messed it through twice already. She sat surprisingly still, though, only sighing heavily once, and it -- well, clarity always comes so slow. She wasn't just worried about the task of manning a keep and all the North, it was keeping the faith of the faces in the trees she talked to and all the trust of the North that made it so.

It only took a couple hours to realize it amongst her few questions, her few words, the order she bring a crate from her room full of gods knew what to the forge when she'd left.

So he is, or was, rather, and he didn't have to try to look like he belonged in the stone walls. He just did. Someone really should have stopped him still; he'll have to remember to talk to Arya about security and the guards that aren't guarding and ensuring no one merely walks into their fair lady's chambers.

But it's a crate over his shoulder and that party assembled in the courtyard, yellow and grey and that first time he'd seen the two banners flying together. He knew Rickon would likely bring Shireen back, but at the same time, he didn't really believe it? There's something about young people in love that has him smiling at nothing in particular when Shireen spots him and nods and starts to flit through people to reach him.

"That's the one I was telling you about," she says, and he's about to offer his services as a smith or anything the older man next to her and Rickon might need. At least until he recognizes that look and then can't meet it.

"Milady," he greets, averting his eyes.

"Your grace," the man corrects sharply, something in his eyes, and it's months ago, Gendry forced to kneel before Lord Snow, a hit to his side since he was presumptuous enough to not adress Warden in the North as _king_.

He remembers all Lord Tyrell spoke in unassuming tones of the Throne meant for a Baratheon, though, and he frowns to remember King Robert and his brother were kings each, and the kingdom might have fallen to Shireen.

It isn't a comfortable thought.

"Davos," she smiles, not unkindly, and he knows his cousin enough by now to observe she's as excited and happy as most nobility in Westeros seem to be. "Just look at him."

"Look at me, boy," the man, Davos, says, soft somehow like he's apologetic. He steps towards Gendry like he's a Hand or brother of the King all over again, and it's strangely familiar when he reaches out with half a hand to clasp hold of his chin and scrutinize his face.

The seconds pass by, and Gendry just hears the sound of vague loud laughter, something Rickon must have said, but he still can't look at Davos. It isn't anything like betrayal since Shireen is so nice, but he figured no one else had to know he was anything more than a bastard smith. It's all getting too heavy for him, here beneath the Northern sky and the indifferent look of judgement he thinks he can see from the corner of his eye. Shireen's still smiling when he looks, and no, it wasn't to be like this. He tries not to clench his fists, tries not to exhale too angry like a bull with his teeth kicked in.

He's not sure of his anger, but he's tired, and then he's annoyed when Ser Davos says it like he should be proud instead of 'shamed just now. It's twisting in his stomach wrong. It's angry metal beaten by his hands. _R'hllor_. "Your father was King, boy."

It just wouldn't make no difference if his father had been a woodcarver or a wight. "He wasn't," he answers, more snide than he'd have liked before he remembers his place and the courtesy he's a right hypocrite for forgetting when it's most what he tries to engrain in Arya.

"King?" He laughs nothing jolly, but it's kinder than the apology and more pleasant than the _or your father?_ and the hilarity of that. Davos clasps him on the shoulder good-naturedly, like how Tobho Mott would when he was feeling kind or drunkenly paternal, and he smiles only a bit less hopeful than Shireen is. "What is it then, boy?" Davos asks, his eyes steely and bringing him back when he finally looks up. The old man stops just a moment, but the look he gives to seeing his face fully is far less reserved than the Lady Brienne of Tarth's was. Not as frightened or hopeful or disbelieving or shocked, but not every bastard is born of passion. "Would you like to see the Stormlands?"

\- -- - -- -

Only a couple hours -- she was right.

Rickon's the first Arya sees, or the first to have seen her riding ahead of her party and carrying the wind with her strewn into her hair and hiked into her skirts, free on her face as she hurries to dismount her steed as easy as like she's half the horse herself and just as giddy.

"Rickon!" she exclaims, falling into his wide-stretched arms without a thought other than just one more brother to return with the odds rather good.

They'd all come back, and half the continent away wasn't half the world away like she'd been. The worse had already happened, and the North was all of them and everything and -- father.

Rickon released his hug on her to just bop her forehead with his and stay frozen there a moment, like wolves, like their father used to do to them, but she -- if she barely remembered he used to show affection that way, how can he?

She remembers Bran, though.

And there might still be a chip in her heart where winter hit and thawed and ruined all of them just a little bit.

"How are you?" he asks, taking her arm all proper-like, gesturing to one of the men in instruction for them to take the horse, sounding almost sincere. "How are the people?" 

"First sounds I heard were of children. It was nice."

"Sounds awful," but just because he's an arse.

"There wasn't any trouble," she continues, not really surprised, but.. nice. It was nice. "Everyone spoke decent of each other, no one spoke about problems save for a horse thief that'd come and gone, but --"

"Not any trouble?" he repeats. "A man only loses his life for that. Why'd he steal it?"

"Why's it matter?"

"I don't know," he says. Slow with a shrug like when he was just a kid. "His reasoning could determine his life."

A smile curls at her mouth, and she glances up to the stark yellow banners of a dancing stag. "Shireen would offer the thief mercy, wouldn't she." A Wildling would slit his throat.

"Could just cut half his fingers off instead," he grins, wolfish and boyish and something so teasing it shouldn't be sinister, right?

"Inside." She takes her arm from his to cuff at his ear, and he's laughing as he holds open the door for her.

\- -- - -- -

Her lungs burn with her screams. She pretends it's all a lie, those masks. All an act like that stupid, _stupid_ play and how she had to scream in the joke of a mockery, the whore that could have been the sister she wasn't supposed to remember. 

She sees Sansa with a mouth of fangs and her face growing longer like a Stark's until it's covered in fur, her eyes as blue as Lady's and her mouth full of blood.

She's thrashing, and it's so many masks, the screams still in their hearts when it happens, and not all of them deserved it. She's burning up. She hears their pleas. Some of them even laughed because they hadn't remorse or guilt or the peace their _gift_ was supposed to afford others, but they deserved worse, and there's so much blood from their countless wounds, pouring out from their gashes and their hearts and she can't wash it off her hands, there's so much red, and it's everywhere, and it's gushing from the cut on her stomach, and her lungs burn with her screams.

One of the whores is laughing, only she doesn't have a face. It's melting, and Jaquen is saying something she can't remember. His hands are on her wrists, but she stops fighting him since it might be different this time, and the waif is drinking the water, and there are worms in her teeth and ashes in her bones, and that pool is flowing red with corpses, and she's killed all of them. 

She's killed a deer in a meadow, a mess of a pelt and bones and blood on a soil, moonlit floor, and she's tearing into its meat. Its pulse has faded to nothing but adrenaline loud in her cocked ears, and there's blood on her paws, yellow in her eyes.

She wakes with the taste of blood in her mouth. Her feet are stuck in the sheets, and they're soaked in sweat, and for an instant, she's frantically worried it's her blood pouring out of her, sliced into her face until she's realized she's crying. Her cheeks are wet. 

She's almost forgotten where she is.

"Arya," he says hoarsely, like he's been saying it for hours, and she -- she remembers, and she can hear a wolf howling. "Arya."

Her throat is parched. Her limbs feel weak. She tries to breathe, realizes Gendry's holding onto her, cupping her face in his hands and saying her name again and again like he's trying to smooth it into her cheekbones, her tear-struck eyes. "Gendry," she chokes, sounding broken, so damned scared, she's surprising herself again with how just how much.

"Arya," and he's whispering. And he looks more frightened than she thinks she might. His fingers fold around hers cautiously, his palm flat against the back of her hand, and oh, she laughs, incredulously worried she's stabbed him before she sees the specks of blood on his chest, his blood underneath her nails, and it isn't funny at all. 

She can't stop shaking. He just holds her and listens to her breathe tensely, tersely, like she's fighting to stay in his arms, her fingers flinching like she's holding Needle and always making things her battles.

\- -- - -- -

And she was the first foot to leave the bed in the morning. She hadn't spoken the entire night, hadn't slept any, but he didn't either.

He'd never seen her fits of sleep like that before. He thought they were passed. 

Turns out the crate she asked him to bring here is full of her things, which he might have figured but hadn't known for sure, and she's invading more of him piece by piece, his head when he was young and his heart when he was already hers and his forge and his bed and his skin with the scratch of her nails against his chest. She kicked him in all her thrashing, too, but that's full of the past, and she's most of that as much as the rest. 

He watches her slump to the basin and scrub the salty tears from her face with a vigor that's more her fists at her eyes than anything, and his arms miss holding her and telling her that they'd be alright. Just fine. He stares at her when she tugs her tunic over her head to replace it with a gown she isn't looking at, likely just because it isn't any work but the one tie at the front of the dark green frock, but she looks so tired to be a proper lady, circles beneath her eyes and her hands still fighting. 

She takes the rag from the water basin and rings it out delicately, careful not to slop any while she moves towards him. The bed creaks when he sits up with his eyes focused on her hollow grey ones for any hint of the parts of her from last night, but it's all these damned pieces of him, her weight a comfortable dip in the mattress and her eyes an open warmth settling in him.

She washes the blood from the scratches she'd marked into his chest, though there isn't much, and the lines aren't that deep. The crescent red imprint of her nails waning poetic into his skin is just another mark to the many she's left on him, and he doesn't really even think about it when she asks too resolved to be timid, "Stay with me today," with a flash of her eyes up to look at him, just pure silver and how they haven't quite settled into themselves yet. 

One day she could be more grand and more magnificent, as beloved as a queen and just as commanding surrounded by ice and her quick wit, her quicker resolve when it comes to a sword and how easy it is for her to fight those wars she's always fighting. She could live a thousand days of her grace and fire in her veins, and she'd be the one to resound and reform and renew again everything those lords and ladies could have broken. 

And he could be anything, maybe grow a beard, maybe have his children inherit a kingdom, perhaps just keep doing this without all the torment that's a kick into his lungs and her hollow eyes and the faces in the past still catching up to them. 

He says that of course, he'll stay with her. 

She's too tough to look relieved, but she leans forward, and she kisses just over his heart where her dreams hadn't scratched his skin.

\- -- - -- -

Rickon doesn't seem to mind, but Shireen tries not to say anything when they wonder into the library to find Arya cross-legged on a tasseled rug with Gendry seated on a stool behind her. He's braiding her hair delicately, twining her curls in strands he twists together tenderly and studiously. 

He looked utterly exhausted earlier, Shireen thinks, as Arya had, too, only she doesn't look as grieved as she'd seemed at breakfast. Her eyes are closed, and she leans more and more back onto Gendry's legs, tips her head further into his hands looking nothing but relaxed with so much of her neck bared and the faint edge of a smile given to something that he says. 

They're surrounded by books and books and scrolls, and when Shireen politely clears her throat, they both look up like they've been caught up to something less innocent. "Where's the Maester?" she asks, looking up to Rickon. He's staring at Gendry, though.

"Don't know," Arya answers. She nudges Gendry's knee, and he picks up a comb either of them must have brought, starts to part a different portion of her hair. 

"What are you doing?" Rickon finally asks a bit too pointedly. He roughs through his hair and shifts from foot to foot, frowns at his sister when she pretends to busy herself in a book.

"Maps."

"In Jon's study," he counters.

"Nope," Gendry interjects before Arya can, hitting her with his knee when she shoves at him. "No. We tried that."

Shireen looks between both of them slowly. "Were there not any?"

"There were." Gendry's back to being gruff, the comb between his teeth now since he's using both his hands to tame Arya's hair. 

"Among things," she mutters. That earns her a strange look from Shireen, but it isn't her fault, not really -- Arya hadn't been _looking_ for anything. A letter to Jon addressed from Dany and dated near two and a half years ago just happened to appear in the drawer she was searching. And Gendry had taken it before she could read it. Of course. "Ow," she mutters. 

"Sorry, m'love," he mumbles around the comb, nearly incomprehensible where it's tucked into the corner of his mouth. He smooths through the hair he pulled at too harshly, and Arya's relaxed and soothed again, and Shireen wonders if he meant that endearment or if it was just a slip of the tongue. 

She loves her cousin, but she doesn't know how she's supposed to -- how he and Arya are -- well. 

It's just seemed that their world has been kind to all Westeros's houses except Baratheon. That's all. 

It could be different, though. Could be. 

"Arya," Rickon says, smarmy and smug and a shot of naïve. "What's that mark on your neck?"

\- -- - -- -

And then several things happen within the course of a couple days.

"It's probably a boy," she huffs. Her hair's all a mess, and she's fret with stains on that white tunic, and he doesn't even know what she's eating this time. She seems happy, though, as worked up as she is. "Of course, Sansa's probably carrying a perfect baby lordling in her belly. Perfect everything," she sulks, shuffling her fingers through her hair.

He glances over at how oblivious she is(n't), her dress hiked up past her knees and a crinkle to her nose. And she's so stupid. 

And quiet.

When Rickon tosses her a folded sheet of parchment an afternoon later, she sees the broken seal of a golden rose, and oh, how her face lights up. She's beautiful and forgotten she's miffed at Sansa when she unfolds the letter to read it, but -- 

Oh, no. Oh, gods. 

A man arrived in Highgarden asking to see their Lady while guards fought to keep him out. One side of his face was burned like mutton, and Sansa wrote that it was _Ser_ Sandor Clegane.

"A gravedigger," Arya reads. A fucking gravedigger. A _fucking_ gravedigger, and if that just isn't ironic or unfair or.. or "A gravedigger." 

When she starts to laugh, it's incredulous and it's so loud, and she can't stop it until tears start to leak out of her eyes.

She isn't sure they're angry or sad ones.


	39. The One You Hurt So Much

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He wants to quip how there was no letting her do anything, a quick offhand comment she'll roll her eyes at and veer away from before either of them thinks too hard about the implications, and yes, obviously, he'd let her. But not everything's quite that simple. 
> 
> "Come here," he tells her instead.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry, I'm such a horrendous person, I know! Fair warning, this isn't a 7k word chapter of pretentiously poetic prose, this is short and ahhh! Foreshadowing everywhere!

Lord Tyrell was there in an instant.

Maybe it was precaution that had him standing straighter, bracing his leg like he doesn't need his cane. Or maybe it was propriety long since set into his spine.

Maybe it's power or possessiveness or bitter pretense waving his guards away from trying to restrain the man that was once a dog that had him dead for _years_ , but by the Seven, how Sandor Clegane stands defiant, how the burned half of his face is sneering in an aside to Willas's smile.

Maybe it's just self-preservation.

"Sansa," he says. Sandor's voice is rough, grainy from the disuse of the lesser part of a decade's silence, but it's not like it's bird's wings featherlight and freeing his chest cavity. "I want to see her."

"I'll take you," Lord Willas Tyrell offers, not unkindly. He can't say why. He's just thinking of Loras.

\- -- - -- -

"If you'd been King," Arya starts warily from where she sits perched on the anvil he's taken to ignoring for impracticality's sake, a crease between her brows and something a little more haunted than he's used to. Like _Rickon shouting at the Godswood trees_ haunted, _the knife Arya pulled to his throat in her sleep_ haunted. "Would you have let me join your Kingsguard?"

He's stopped his hammer midstrike and still hears the clatter of bent steel in his ears. How quiet she is. How she's making herself seem so small, her grey eyes like winter air chilling the coolness into all this heat starting to sweat down her legs, his neck.

He wants to quip how there was no letting her do anything, a quick offhand comment she'll roll her eyes at and veer away from before either of them thinks too hard about the implications, and yes, obviously, he'd let her. But not everything's quite that simple.

"Come here," he tells her instead. He starts to loosen the ties of his smock so her pretty dress won't catch the soot staining the leather, but she's small and quick and forceful and curls herself up in his arms before he can manage it. It's not like she's ever minded anyways, and now that his blood's starting to burn hot like the fire, he tries not to tug his dirty fingers through her neatly braided hair. "You couldn't be on the Kingsguard if you were my wife."

"Couldn't I?" she huffs, hurt, but the sudden grip of her nails into his back makes it a challenge so he shushes her.

 _You'd be m'lady_.

"I'd want you by my side, not behind me," he says softly. She grumbles something about in front of, but pfft, how's he know? Never seen the Kingsguard. Queensguard. "'Sides," he smiles, resting his chin atop her forehead, "if we were wed, you'd see more of me and could protect me anywhere, right?"

She sighs. Like it's his fault somehow, this world they've got caught up in. He might have just pieced it together; this morning's counsel might not have gone well. "No assassin could get to you in our bedchambers, I guess."

\- -- - -- -

"I don't want to see you," Sansa says, because like she couldn't at thirteen, she's rage and she's hurt and she's _life isn't fair_ and anger and _I trusted you_ and too many things for a little girl heart to feel all at once. So she over-reacts like a child would, childish defiance with feminine discretion since she doesn't have to be poised and lovely anymore. She just has to be happy. "Please go."

"Sansa," _little bird_.

"I wasn't asking," she sniffs, and Mother, Maiden, help her, she won't start crying now. She's come too far. She isn't standing in place and overlooking a kingdom turned to ash and a country spurned into a graveyard. "Leave, _Ser_."

\- -- - -- -

 _Would it have changed if we had?"_ Daenerys will ask him. In only.. oh, about seventeen days. He's yet to walk the halls of the Red Keep colored proudly with banners of Houses all over Westeros, the Stark colors just next to the Targaryen black and red.

_He won't think about Dany wearing red, wearing a necklace of his bites kissed around her throat._

_"I don't know," he tells her truthfully, because he doesn't. He might have still gone back to Winterfell years upon years ago when she never asked him to stay and he never kissed her and she never shed a tear when he rode off. But now, here in the future, he's grinning, and it's full of something like a promise when he takes her hand just to feel how warm her palm is. "I know nothing, aye?" And it isn't as self-deprecating as it ought to be._

_"Some things," she grants him, that coy smile he'll grow so used to._

_They continue to walk in oh, just barely-tolerable silence, this will be so companionable and awful, really, it's like a salve. He won't think too hard about this until later, how it didn't feel like three arrows taking root in his chest._

\- -- - -- -

In her dreams, Gendry has a rainbow for his mouth, stars for his eyes, and he has antlers stemming out of a crown.

He's gallant, and he's beautiful, and it's so real when this dream of him touches the inside of her wrist that she shudders, curls in on herself, could drink all of him and still be stretched wide.

But before she can breathe, let this elation slowly twist her into nothing but waking up with a smile and him snoring into her hair, she can feel something shift like suspense, darken like regret, hang heavy like an executioner's sword, the weight of a promise.

She sees Sansa waiting in a tower, reclusive, radiant, pregnant, and kept safely away for health of her baby and the protection of a family.

Maybe two.

She sees a baby with Gendry's dark hair and eyes so blue they might not ever soften to Stark grey, and there's a heartbreak that names the child the bastard son of Willas Tyrell all because Sansa's family and history repeats itself and Arya turned into Lyanna after all.

She doesn't know for true, she can't possibly, but she thinks the baby's name is to be Jon.

Arya wakes to a wolf howling, sharp, quick, and so confused, the sound so forlorn and lost that it has to be Rickon out there somewhere. Maybe just as lost. Just as shaking.


	40. Like Lovers Like

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "It's so much better with your hand than mine," she whispers. And to darken his blush, she licks the salt of sweat off his shoulder and up his neck. "Better still with your tongue."

"What did you want?" he asks her. Because he's not really known. He's asked her countless times, has smiled and frowned and kissed her for her answers, but she's standing in front of him. 

Her hair glowing. 

Her cheeks pink. 

Smudges of soot on her face from his hands. 

And he's back in Harrenhal just like that. The blink of an eye, a memory she's likely forgotten. This one was all his, anyways, the first of her he'd seen in days, fiery and defiant and bloody stupid before him, standing in front of the barrel of water he was after. He half thought of kissing her to shut her up, then. He mostly thought he was stupid. Tried not to notice how her cheeks were looking fuller, her hair starting to curl at the ends.

"I'm not sure," she answers now, the words next to nothing but something to fill the space between them, but he knows the look she's got in her eyes. Like she's restless, like wolf-girls always want to run. "We should have gone to Dorne."

"Should we have?" he answers, nonchalant to how sudden she's frowning at him, a pout of her mouth so pretty he could kiss it. 

So he does for all the times he never did, stretching into her space slowly. Her hands come up to curl over his broad arms, to rest over his chest with fists full of his tunic, and he's all hers. He swears.

"We can," she whispers, a murmuring trace on the edge of her smile, the tip of her tongue. She sighs into him when he raises his hand to her hair and tugs her brown locks gently, pulling her neck back to deepen the kiss with a slow lick of his tongue into her mouth, and _oh_ , how she keens. 

"We should' been doing this for years," he drawls, kissing down her jaw. He tenderly sets his lips to the spot on her chin his stubble's rubbed raw, but she presses down on his shoulders and offers her neck. "Or not," he remembers, because he's burning like smelted ore, fire breathing into veins, just crushing into his chest cavity and beating his heart in love for her. "I don't think I ought to mark you."

"Then -- _stop_ ," she gasps, a hitch in her breath he sucks from the pulse over her throat. Like honey or a moth to a flame, she needs, and it's all she has in her to not say _please_ or press his hips closer to where she wants them. He skims his teeth over her neck tantalizingly, tasting her skin with nips teasing her hard and harder.

"Do we have time?" he wonders, stopping just short of the neckline of her pretty gown, the russet brown cloth tied and just begging not to be, begging like the sweet pink of her swollen mouth when he sees. Her red face. Her ice eyes. 

"We've nothing but time," she tells him obviously, an argument slight in her voice, but the quirk of her lips into a smirk is downright sinful. "But winter is coming, isn't it?"

And with that, she pushes him down onto the floor, untying the strings of his tunic as she does. "Anyone can walk in," he reminds her, but he's down and thudding against the smithy's floor, unable to breathe when she climbs atop of him.

She gestures to the closed door in answer, before taking her dress in her hands and draping it carefully around them. "You're not open for work yet."

"Yeah," he answers, low in his chest. Lifting up for another kiss, he slips his callused hands up the hem of her skirts to feel the softness of her skin. When he slides his hands up the backs of her knees, though, she's covered in cloth he doesn't place until his fingers brush the edges of them up on her thighs. "Stockings," he realizes, feeling her squirm and -- _oh_. He swallows. "They're nice."

"I'm a lady today," she whispers, and he thought he smelled a touch of perfume on her neck. 

"Am I your smith, then?" He's almost considering telling her that later, when it's not so early in the morning and she's a day to survive looking presentable, yes, gods, yes, but he rubs his thumbs in circles that tease the insides of her thighs. 

Her cry is quick and soft, the arch of her back a rustle of her dress with its hem brushing against his abdomen, and she's shifting quickly, rolling her hips over his hardening cock. "You're just mine," she declares, every part of her starting to thrum with a need that might kill her, urging a quickness into everything like it might melt. "Your breeches."

"Kiss me," he tells her next instead. One hand undoing his laces, the other holding her, he lets her press him back flat against the floor, her lips following him down with no air between them. She sucks his bottom lip between her teeth and bites, drags that moan from deep in his chest where it rumbles against her hands, over his heart heavy and full. He does with his tongue what he does with his fingers, under her dress and layers of skirts that have her bare beneath and leave him breathing hard, slipping between her lips and brushing against her. His knuckle rubs at her slick heat, the parts of her folds wet and almost as sweet as her kiss -- a stroke of his tongue against hers, each breathy sound she lets leave her. 

She squeaks and shudders when he rubs his knuckle over the part of her that surges her up, curves her back and slacks her jaw and scrunches up her eyes to nothing but beautiful, a whining lilt to the _oh_ she begs of him. Pulsing sensation floods each pore of her, blinds and burns, and she circles her hips in rocking searches for friction that urge his fingers faster on the bundle of nerves that have her clenching and _so_ close, oh, gods, she's writhing and sliding herself up to the base of his cock, clawing her nails into his sweaty abdomen. 

Rubbing at her as quick as she pants and gasps, he raises himself up until he can see the beads of sweat glistening between her breasts just in front of his face. He presses his mouth to the fabric of her dress, wets the cloth with his tongue so it's a hot, dark spot over her nipple, hard enough he can bite. 

He groans right with her when she tangles her hands in his hair and pulls, and then it's a fight with the rest of their clothes, nothing but her shift sweaty and sticking to her skin when she's impatient and scorching enough to say _please_ , her knees on either side of him and his breeches pulled down his thighs. He helps her guide himself slowly into her, a burn still that locks her jaw and flushes down down her chest, but the second she relaxes is the instant she jars her hips and pushes herself down so he's deep inside her in a quick thrust, and he slams his head against the floor. 

"Fuck," he chokes, and it makes her _clench_ , and he grabs her thigh with his right hand to pull her closer, uses his left to help lift her up, to set the pace with her that's spasming harder and clashing and fast and addictive. He thrusts himself into her again into each bounce of her hips taking him again and again, her cries loud as she rides him. It hits him hot in his belly that they're fucking, her arse smacking against his thighs and his hands reaching to cover all the skin of hers he can reach, and it makes him near primal. 

He's hers, and he about loses it there, loses himself to the urgency spiking the snaps of his hips into hers quicker and harder, heat starting to spread all throughout him. Her nails are marks cutting into his skin and holding on as she trembles, grey eyes half-lidded and shutting when she feels herself throb and clench around him tightly. She feels it thrum through every part of her before she feels him come with her name, quick and hot and arcing up to chase the sounds away with his lips a ragged breath against hers. 

She eagerly solders her mouth to his clumsily, frantic movements aching for the release winding up her every muscle, but when he slips his hand back between them and presses to the spot that makes her cry out with a sharp keen, she almost can't take it. She can't stop saying his name, almost in tears at the pleasure wracking throughout her. There's nothing but him in the moment, then nothing but how it whites out euphorically. How she shakes. 

He kisses her shoulders, her neck, her chin, her cheeks. He holds her trembling in his arms, his come on her thighs, his teeth marks on her neck, and it's smoldering hot and sticky and uncomfortable, but he wants her to let go about as much as she wants to unwrap her arms from around him. 

"It's so much better with your hand than mine," she whispers. And to darken his blush, she licks the salt of sweat off his shoulder and up his neck. "Better still with your tongue."

"You want me to?" he asks her, his mouth dry. It's too soon for his cock to stir, even still inside her, but more warmth is starting to nestle I his chest. Dragging his hand down from her back, he squeezes the fleshy curve of her arse. 

"I might die if you do."

"Later," he swears, feeling her squirm at the promise. He's cooled by reluctance to let her go and spend most of the day away from her, but something like family, duty, honor, he shouldn't spend the day having her on the forge's floor when there's work to be done and a perfectly good straw mattress waiting for them in their room. 

"You're gonna say we ought to dress," she huffs, sweet to fiery as quick as steam, a pout of her lips just capturing his heart alright and garnering another deep kiss since he's a goner. 

They do redress, though, more unhelpful to each other than for true, but he can't help the way her dress just looks better when it's a pile on the floor and her cheeks are pink from how much those words really mean deep enough in her heart where he always seems to reach. 

"Lunch," she promises him with a smile before she goes on to be Lord of Winterfell, but he takes her hand and tugs before she can step out the door. 

"Your dream," he remembers, earnest. It's honest somehow. He has the kicks on his shins proving last night was just. An adventure for her in slumber, one particularly hard thwack to his side before she rolled over. "You said you were running, but what'd you want?"

"I think," she starts, and again, it's like she's not sure or like she definitely knows and just uses a pretense like a hot knife. It makes her smile, though. A real smile. Soot still smudged on her face. "I think I just wanted to go home."

And she presses up to her toes so she can kiss his cheek.


End file.
